The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson

If 'Snow Crash' was the definitive cyberpunk book, then 'The Diamond Age or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer' is the last word on that particular genre. It's nominally set in the same world as the earlier book and shares some of the geo-political background. Nation states are an outdated concept, and now people are grouped into phyles by a common culture or other affiliation. Three major world views are uneasy neighbours - the neo Victorians of New Atlantis with their mannered stoicism and carefully managed hypocrisy sit alongside the Confucianism of the Han Chinese and the Nipponese.

The plot centres around a peculiar book commissioned by the Neo-Victorian Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle McGraw as a present for his grand-daughter, conceived and built by the nano engineer John Percival Hackworth who steals a copy of book for his own daughter, which as a result of a street robbery then falls into the hands of Nell, a young girl living in wretched circumstances in the leased territory of a future Shanghai. The book has been designed as a fully interactive education for a young lady from the age of five or six through to adolescence as a subversive alternative to the stifling conformity of the Neo Victorian system. Nell's education over the course of many years, including insights into subjects starting with self defence, history, nano engineering and finally the limits of artificial intelligence (or pseudo intelligence as Hackworth defines it) of Turing machines, has far reaching and startling consequences.

I particularly enjoyed the segments of the book told from the viewpoint of the protagonist of the Primer - Princess Nell and her companions Dinosaur, Duck, Peter Rabbit and Purple who are based on the few toys owned by the Nell of the real world. The self defence taught by Dojo the mouse and Princess Nell's slow unravelling of the relentless logic of Castle Turing are the high points.

If the book has any failings, it is the rather abrupt and rushed ending which leaves many things open and unresolved, although in retrospect the consequences of a world profoundly changed are thought provoking indeed.