The most important quality to achieving an interesting life is deemed to be a subversive attitude towards the status quo. Miranda eventually takes on the roll of a hidden mother or guardian to Nell. They destroy the Feed in formerly Chinese territory and capture Nell. Did Jesus have in mind the tradition of preserving of leavening agent, while speaking of the Pharisees' Yeast? (NOT interested in AI answers, please). Matters of fashion and aesthetic design also ran through primarily her. The book of the seed is inside Nell's Primer at the end and being worked on by the drummers even as they remove Miranda from the Drummer community. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. The primary point of dispute, as always, was intellectual property, the lack of which in Turingia devalued the achievements of neo-Victorian engineering. Tasks were created centrally, and distributed hierarchically, according to the principles of the Mouse Army. As the time went by, however, Miranda spent more and more time alone, and apart from Nell and Carl Hollywood, she had very few contacts to the outside world. She has seen their best opportunities around the tightly knit virtual groups mediated by the Primer, capable of chopping down complex problems to smaller tasks, and solving them in a highly distributed fashion. Hackworth makes his last contribution to the creation of the Seed, but Nell rescues Miranda before the Drummers can create it. Matter compilers receive their raw materials from the Feed, a system analogous to the electrical grid of modern society. What is the connection between Snow Crash and The Diamond Age? Its free and takes less than 10 seconds! It's one of Stephenson's quirks that his endings are abrupt and leave the reader feeling like things are unresolved. It is to some extent a science fiction coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. If you fall of the tech-speak train you start to glaze over a bit and get confused, or at least I do. Her efforts were concentrated in two main areas. Later Miranda's storyline is taken over by her boss, Carl Hollywood, after Miranda disappears in her quest to find Nell. She spent more and more time in the Land Beyond, assuming the form of many sentient beings roaming the endless planes and mountains of the magical universe. "The provisional commanders of her divisions stood foremost, as did The novel's neo-Victorian setting, as well as its narrative form, particularly the chapter headings, suggest a relation to the work of Charles Dickens. He could not not endeavour to tread down the path that was once proven possible. Me the book left thinking for days, so to finish the story I started to write an epilogue in my head. As the predominantly agrarian societies of European South Africa began to urbanize and industrialize, the region evolved into a major supplier of precious minerals to the world economy; gold especially was urgently needed to back national currencies and ensure the continued flow of expanding international trade. The novel's character Judge Fang is based on a creative extension of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee mystery series, which is based around a Confucian judge in ancient China who usually solves three cases simultaneously. I think the issue is the Primer. A third storyline follows actress ("ractor") Miranda Redpath, who voices most of the Primer characters who interact with Nell and essentially becomes Nell's surrogate mother. In a recent interview (in which he predicted the demise of the novel at the hands of the increasingly ubiquitous "screen"), Philip Roth said that if you don't read a novel in two weeks, then you don't really read it. The part that is confusing me is as follows: Both the Fists and the Mouse Army come from the Celestial Kingdom yet they seem opposed - surely Dr X would have wanted the Mouse Army to support the Fists. I finished it with a bit of bafflement - what was what I'd just read actually about? "The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. Now that you point it out, though, it really makes quite a bit of sense. She finally finds that in Miranda and even though we don't get to see the relationship play out, this ends the device driving the novel. Diamonds, gold, and imperialist intervention (1870-1902) South Africa experienced a transformation between 1870, when the diamond rush to Kimberley began, and 1902, when the South African War ended. Nicole Galland, by Hanya Yanagihara. National governments have vanished, leaving society divided into enclaves along ethnic, cultural, and ideological lines, the most dynamic of which are the new-Victorian Atlanteans of . The phyles coexist much like historical nation-states under a system of justice and mutual protection, known as the Common Economic Protocol (CEP). Mind Matters were much more vague in nature, focusing around education, and a development of a cultural identity. Snow Crash is without question the biggest SF novel of the 1990s. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. The Book of the Seed stayed locked for many years. To quote Dr. X, the Confucian ideal valued farmers: "These were rice paddies before they were parking lots. The mix of high technology, the sophisticated neo-Victorians, and the Confuscians made a confusing but ultimately satisfying story. The Primer is intended to steer its reader intellectually toward a more interesting life, as defined by Lord Finkle-McGraw, and growing up to be an effective member of society. Until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 B.C., all humans on all continents were still living as Stone Age hunter/gatherers. In The Diamond Age, much is made of the fact that there is an actual human who loves Nell behind the face of the Primer. The ending of The Diamond Age. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Ladys Illustrated Primer is a 1995 science-fiction coming-of-age novel by Neal Stephenson. Life in Shanghai devolves when the Fists of Righteous Harmony, a Chinese nationalist group, has an uprising. The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson. . The doctors were baffled by her symptoms, and thought it might have been an aftershock caused by the high concentration of sites that almost killed her in the Drummers Cave. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. Peasants planted the seeds and had highest status in the Confucian hierarchy. Internally, the New Atlantis phyle is a corporate oligarchy whose "equity lords" rule the organization and its bylaws under allegiance to the vestigial British monarchy. Hackworth's crime becomes known to Lord Finkle-McGraw and Dr. X, the black market engineer whose compiler Hackworth used to create the copy of the Primer, and each man attempts to exploit Hackworth to advance their opposing goals. Although, I'd thought that removing that aspect was Hackworth's alteration that he slipped in when he was ordered to mass-produce it. And it does - what I love about Stephenson is his high level of prescient-ness. This guide is based on the 1995 Bantam Spectra print edition. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. The initial world building, the idea behind the Primer, the main characters, these are all done brilliantly and the story proceeds really well for the first half. Though the wedding briefly revives Vixs old feelings for Bru, whom Caitlin is marrying, Vix is soon in love with Gus, another old summer friend, and a more compatible match. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Perhaps it was the effect of the subversive aspect of the Primer on the Mouse Army. [citation needed], "Thetes" are individuals who are not members of any phyle and are often socially disadvantaged and economically poor, being similar to second-class citizens under the CEP. Princess Nell and the Mouse Army were celebrated as heroes in New Atlantis culminating in a traditional coronation ceremony two weeks later. The annexation of the diamond fields signaled a more progressive British policy under a Liberal ministry but fell short of the ambitious confederation policy pursued by Lord Carnarvon, the colonial secretary in Benjamin Disraelis 1874 Conservative government; he sought to unite the republics and colonies into a self-governing federation in the British Empire, a concept inspired by Theophilus Shepstone, who, as secretary for native affairs in Natal, urged a coherent regional policy with regard to African labour and administration. There's a kind of girl power aspect to it all that's especially nice. Alternative ways to code something like a table within a table? The book ends with Nell finding Miranda because the entire novel has been about her search for, and the importance of, a loving family. There arent even many markers of whats happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we dont see the neighborhood change from gritty artists enclave to glitzy tourist destination. Stephenson (Snow Crash, 1992) imagines a 21st century in which molecular machines (nanotechnology) can create any desired object or structure. He basically takes a subversive book makes it more Chinese and respectful of authority but he makes the authority the owner of the missing book. A little mound with a small palace was built in the middle of the island that served both as her residence, and as the host of the central governing body. ("The Diamond Age - Setting") To be fair, inventions like lighter-than-air buildings and bacteria-size cameras seem plausible even back in 1995. The ending of The Diamond Age Nathan Nov 27, 2013 05:59PM 0 votes Perhaps it was the effect of the subversive aspect of the Primer on the Mouse Army. But it will take some time. ". Looking for something to do he ended up developing much of the ractive technology the performances used, and creating many of the self-animated characters that filled the lesser roles of the theatres virtual plays. Nell knew very well that the only way to be strong and independent, and more than just a vestigial organ of New Atlantis, was to provide something of true value. I like it a lot more than Snow Crash, though not quite as much as Cryptonomicon. They're a bunch of self-actualizing badasses, not following the sort of simplistic ideology of the Fists. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. I've read both Diamond Age and Snow Crash. Oh, and hold on. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. In Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, the Seed is presented as a fundamentally Oriental solution to the existence of nanotechnology, and put in opposition with the Feed as a Western concept. @moohbear I think the implications of the rest of Dr. X's speech is that you need the scholar-bureaucrats to "teach" (IE, enforce) proper strata and order so that some farmer with a grudge doesn't decide to grow a couple of WMDs to nuke his annoying neighbor's home. 7 yr. ago Miranda was grasping at straws to contact Nell. Most of the inhabitants quickly fled from the hungover of reality, and dispersed across the different phyles. The Diamond Age Envisions the next century as brilliantly as snow crash did the day after tomorrow."Newsweek "[Stephenson is] the hottest science fiction writer in America. basis for our society. All Rights Reserved. it and without appreciating the ramifications of what he was doing, The left shapes are the starting points of the wires and the right shapes are the ending points. If the novel draws from this event, then we can see this as antagonistic towards the Victorian principles and "colonization". So the filial relationships became deranged. For more information, please see our More recently, developmentalists have divided this age period into two separate stages: Emerging adulthood followed by early adulthood. And unlike Diamond Age, the ending of Snow Crash didn't make me feel like hunting down Stephenson and beating him with the manuscript until he coughed up the real ending..;-) Un-fun endings--Stephenson's Bane (Score: 4) by C. E. Sum on Friday September 17, 1999 @01:56AM Homepage Journal. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. Following the Day of the Thousand Fists many events happened in quick succession. Be as it may, the Celestial Kingdom and Dr. X are definitely not of the anarchist persuasion, quite the opposite in fact. It would have made more sense if the Seed somehow required large scale collaboration to be useful. I believe there were some examples of that as the older girls where in charge. devised a trick and slipped it in under the radar of the Judge and Dr. As if the writer could not spend a bit of time after writing a 1000 pages to explain how exactly the story unfolds, and how the carefully built characters will turn out. People flocked from near and far to cultivate and multiply the Seeds, small hands working diligently to scatter them across the land. That leaves bureaucrats and peasants. An illicit copy of the book falls into the hands of an abused little girl, Nell. Midway between these dates, in 1886, the world's largest goldfields were discovered on the Witwatersrand. Then, leadership given by the scholars/bureaucrat would have been meaningful. At a special hearing in October 1871, Robert W. Keate (then lieutenant governor of Natal) found in favour of Waterboer, but the British persuaded him to request protection against his Boer rivals, and the area was annexed as Griqualand West. Retrieve credentials. These dramatic changes were propelled by two linked forces: the development of a capitalist mining industry and a sequence of imperialist interventions by Britain. As for them both leaving the Middle Kingdom they attack the fist checkpoints while Hackworth is watching and tie them up. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. In that book, the Wizard puts on a grand appearance but is later revealed to be merely a man hiding behind a curtain. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. The dark and light sides of friendship breathlessly explored in a novel best saved for summer beachside reading. Now, go to the diamond charging station to the left and place the Hexipal in it. As Dr. X was a scholar-bureaucrat, elevating farmers to the top of the hierarchy might just be self-effacing. Each hut accommodated a troop of four girls, and consisted of a common bedroom with bunk beds, a small kitchen, and a study area. In the novel, the material needs of nearly all thetes are satisfied by freely-available food and clothing, albeit of low quality; thetes without the political connections of a phyle are entitled to similarly low-quality "free justice.". The white population in the Cape numbered 240,000 by the mid-1870s and constituted about one-third of the colonys population. . It is in Diamond Age that the impact of technology on society seems - today - remarkably prescient. 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