The Diamond Age

by Neal Stephenson

Other authorsBruce Jensen (Cover artist), Jamie S. Warren Youll (Cover designer)
Hardcover, 1995-02

Status

Available

Call number

PS3569.T3868 D53

Publication

Bantam Spectra (New York, 1995). 1st edition, 1st printing. 455 pages. $22.95.

Description

Fiction. Literature. Science Fiction. HTML:Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time Decades into our future, a stoneâ??s throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer  Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primerâ??s purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands. Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetesâ??members of the poor, tribeless class.  Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell.  When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorianâ??John Percival Hackworthâ??in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer. Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of Protocol Enforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist.  His quest and Nellâ??s will ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primerâ??a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to decode and reprogram th… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member aplomb1
The Diamond Age seems larger than its 500 pages, and Stephenson's vision of the future, while transformed nearly into unrecognizability by technology, has the grain of our own reality. We are shown not only the massive Feed lines that transport the raw materials for the Matter Compilers, but also
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the terrorists who start fires under them to ignite them, and the various colors of the flames the combusting elements make. The world of The Diamond Age seems closer to the immense web of events and repercussions of our own world than the self-contained story-world we are used to seeing in fiction. It's an astounding achievement for any author, and the fact that The Diamond Age is crafted not out of historical fact but out of pure imagination and extrapolation from our society makes it especially amazing.

The lushness of the world has its downside, though. It's easy to open this book and get lost in its pages, as Stephenson clearly did as he was writing it, but it simply doesn't have the impact of a focused story. It deeply explores the question of what fundamental quality separates human beings from the increasingly complex machines we build, but so much of the plot seems tangential to this question, tangential even to the rest of the story. We watch characters move through this fully realized world with interest, but not much care. His treatment of the novel's characters is deft, but they don't feel nearly as real as the setting, a disappointment after Snow Crash.

Despite its flaws, it's always stunning to get inside Neal Stephenson's head. His view of the promise of technology for education and the failures of "artificial" intelligence are fascinating even to the lay-person, and his eye for immersive detail gets sharper with every book. I'm looking forward to his next tome.
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LibraryThing member PghDragonMan
The Diamond Age, is another excellent speculative fiction work from the pen of Neal Stephenson. While reminiscent of William Gibson’s cyberpunk vision of the future, this future is on a decidedly different track and blends Victorian elements without being steampunk.

The Illustrated Primer of the
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subtitle, refers not to this being a graphic novel, but to a smart book, that falls into the wrong hands. The book is interactive and instructs the owner in science, language and other things they will need to excel in life. Through the primer, Stephenson also introduces a story within a story, where we, the readers of the novel, are shown a fairytale being read by the owner of the primer that has characters from her real life and presents lessons based on her situation in the context of her real life events.

Less arcane than Anathem, it also has a much faster pace to the story. The story is action driven, but in a controlled way. This gives the main characters a chance to develop and change to match their roles. I have come to realize that very well developed characters are a hallmark of Stephenson’s style.

I had some trouble with this novel that pulled it back from the brink of being truly exceptional. The ending left me cold. There is a great lead up to the conclusion, and the conclusion is definitive, but it was not satisfying . . . unless we will be visiting the heroine in a future sequel. I don’t think that likely, however.

Very deserving of four and a half stars, I highly recommend The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer to fans of speculative fiction, steampunk or cyberpunk genres.
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LibraryThing member mbmackay
I came to this book after reading some of Neal Stephenson's later books - the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon - which were more historical fiction than Sci-fi, but this book is straight sci-fi and explains why his books are displayed in the Sci-fi section of bookstores.
This book starts with some
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wonderful sci-fi, nano-technology, dynamic books etc, and paints a believable human universe around that framework. Stephenson then poses a good question - can a stable successful society continue to develop, or does the very stability inhibit the creativity needed to stay ahead?
So far, so good - just the multi-layered complexity and mastery I have come to expect from Stephenson. Sadly, it fizzles out in the final 150 pages or so. The climax is just a little sketchy and more than slightly unbelievable.
The main plot line is a futuristic Pygmalion. More development of this theme to a more believable conclusion would have delivered a more satisfying read.
But, even a near miss by Stephenson is better than most other novels, sci-fi or otherwise, so I'll be back for more. (Read October 2011.)
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LibraryThing member melydia
To be perfectly frank, I don't get it. The story begins with a man named Hackworth creating an interactive primer for his young daughter, but before he can give it to her he is mugged by a gang of boys. One of these boys grabs the book and brings it home for his little sister, Nell. The book itself
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is awesome: interactive, multifunctional, and just all around nifty. I wish I had one. Unfortunately, after this things start getting confusing. Hackworth lives with a group called the Drummers, who share a collective consciousness and have a lot of orgies. Then there's this group called the Fists of Righteous Harmony who start making trouble, and then there are a quarter of a million little Chinese girls getting together, and then there's this mysterious group called Cryptnet... Part of me feels what I've felt when reading other Stephenson books: that while he's excellent at world-building, he's not so hot at endings. There's also a possibility that I'm simply not smart enough to appreciate his work. I'm fine with that. I was kind of surprised at how meh I felt about the latter half of this book, since I enjoyed Snow Crash and Zodiac so much, but perhaps this marks a turning point in his writing. The next book he wrote was Cryptonomicon, on which I gave up after 250 pages. I guess I should stick with Stephenson's older works from now on.
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LibraryThing member Radaghast
The Diamond Age is the culmination of Stephenson's Snow Crash universe. It is the logical conclusion of the breakdown of national government, the creation of powerful nanotechnology, and the reshaping of culture. It is also the story of a little girl who overcomes the circumstances of her birth and
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the hardship of her life to become a Queen.

That's the short version of The Diamond Age. This novel is genre creating in its scope. It has hints of cyberpunk, but is outdoubtedly something new. Stephenson learned a lot from Snow Crash, and presents many of those ideas in fresh and more thoughtful ways. Snow Crash was a great book, but in the face of The Diamond Age, it is inadequate. Part of what makes The Diamond Age superior is its characters. Snow Crash had Hiro Protagonist, one of the greatest sci-fic chracters ever, but Nell might just beat him out. She is a perfect protagonist for the novel and the fact that we see her go from child to adult, and really see the changes and growth that takes place, says a lot about Stephenson's abilities.

What makes Nell such an ideal voice is that this future, while better in some ways than Snow Crash, is still not a pleasant place. There are a lot of very horrific things going on in the world. When told from the perspective of a child, these are simultaneously softened, while also increasing the peril.

The other element that makes The Diamond Age work is the subitlte to the novel. At the heart of everything is the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Created by the Neo-Victorian John Percival Hackworth for use by the child of their leader, the Primer is a fully interactive storybook that is intended to give a child immersive advanced education. It is not A.I. in Stephenson's world A.I. is impossible. Indeed, one of the arguments The Diamond Age makes is that A.I. can never replicate a human mind.

This is all revealed as the book progresses and as Hackworth attempts to steal the Primer for his own daughter. Surprise, surprise, it ends up in the hands of a non-Victorian child living in squalor. We see then that the real power of this book is more than anyone can imagine.

There's far more going on here of course. The novel is very layered. In the background, a new Boxer Rebellion is emerging in the Coastal Republic of China. Attempts are being made to create a new, far more dangerous form of technology that will supercede nanotech. A secret group of hackers may be trying to change the economic and political structure of the world. There are a number of subplots and far more characters that weave seamlessly into Nell's story. But by far the strength of the novel are the moments we see her interact with the Primer. I can't adequately describe it here, but it's a brilliant concept.

The only problems with the novel are at the end. The character of Judge Fang seems very important in the first half of the novel, but disappears by the end, despite events that would seem to require his presence. Would Fang really be okay with the horrible acts done in the name of the Celestial Kingdom? Also, a particular distasteful event which I won't reveal that happened to Nell at the end of the novel was unnecessary. And then there's the fate of the refugees. Nell escapes, but she leaves them behind, and their fate seems almost as bad as the death that faced them!

Trust me though, these are minor strings that Stephenson doesn't tie up. This is a superior novel, and the way it deals with culture is the most honest and illuminating treatment I've seen yet. Please don't listen to any reviewer that says the novel was anti-Chinese or that claims the novel suggested culture is in-born. These people clearly didn't read the book. The novel explicitly is arguing culture is learned, and for every villain of one particular culture there is a villain of another. What it is saying is that each culture views itself as superior and will eventually act as such, which may or may not be true, but Stephenson makes a good argument.

All in all The Diamond Age isn't perfect, but it's nearly so.
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LibraryThing member manque
Unique and absorbing. Better than Stephenson's _Snow Crash_. The story-within-a-story of Princess Nell of the magic book, the dual backdrops of a nanotech future and a sweeping colonial/imperial past, are reminiscent of R. Heinlein at his best. Especially in the blend of narrative and a social
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philosophy stressing self-reliance, a relentless critical examination of one's surrounding culture and government, and in the way in which all of this is ultimately subservient to the most basic of human tales: the search for meaning, and for love. The only serious negative: a somewhat weak ending.
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LibraryThing member Alleycatfish
Personally, I found this book a little hard to read. The author loves to use big words. I even had to look a couple up, and I like to think I have an extensive vocabulary. It also felt "too smart" for me. I had little to no problems grasping the immense tech talk, but sometimes it was just too
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much.

Loved Nell's story and 'watching' her grow up with the Primer. Didn't care much for the other stories.

All in all, I did enjoy reading this book. It is not one I will be rereading any time soon though.
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LibraryThing member traciolsen
It may be time to re-read this one, especially now that The Primer is nearly a reality, along with a lot of other things in the book. Ooh I hope hats and veils come back in fashion!
LibraryThing member MacTuitui
I would have given "The Diamond Age" five stars if I were to review only the world that Stephenson created. The Primer is a wonder, the various factions are more than believable and the technology itself pleases the eye.

But I have to admit that I had trouble feeling the need to turn the pages after
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a while. The various storylines are difficult to follow and I was disappointed by the outcome of the story. Or I missed the point, who knows.
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LibraryThing member majjacsobe
Stephenson has a fine imagination for fantastic technologies, and the effect of these technologies on the future world and its inhabitants. Worth at least three stars just for that. The plot, could use a bit of buffing. The ending was, as other reviewers note, a bit of a let down.
LibraryThing member iBeth
I loved Nell, the book's hero; the narrative world is evocative, and I want my own Primer! The end of this book is somewhat strange, however.

The book explores some interesting questions about teaching/technology: e.g., Must education be subversive? What should the role of human teachers be? What
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does technology make possible that traditional teaching methods do not?
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
Picking this up for the first time, long after I ought to have read it, I was surprised to see that it was written as long ago as 1995. I have had varied experiences with science fiction from the late 1980s/early 1990s, as we were then on the cusp of widespread technological change that has
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impacted everything and the entire way we live now. Some novels survive this; some succeed despite it; and some crash and burn.

I'm pleased to say that 'The Diamond Age' is in the first category, a survivor.

In a world transformed by nanotechnology and smart materials, the story is a Bildungsroman concerning a young girl from the wrong side of the tracks who comes into possession of a highly advanced nanotechnologically-enhanced book that was designed for a very rich client to give his daughter the necessary life skills to survive in a Balkanised, rapidly-moving world. The story follows two protagonists: Nell, the girl; and the designer of the book, John Hackworth (a fine name for an engineer, echoing Timothy Hackworth, a contemporary of George Stephenson). This is appropriate on a range of levels; the political structure of the future world now reflects a level of self-organisation based on self-selected allegiances according to class, skill or philosophical/political/ religious alignment and nation-states, though not dead, play a much reduced role in world affairs.

Hackworth has made an illegal copy of the book for his own daughter; but he loses this as a result of street crime and that copy passes to Nell. A further copy falls into the hands of Dr.X, a crime lord who has his own ideas about ways to wield power and influence in the real world, and how that can coincide with other ideas about displaced children. The plot beyond the story of Nell mainly concerns the interplay between these three copies of the book, the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" of the subtitle, and how they end up changing the world.

The world has also changed in other ways; China has in part turned back to Confucianism, allied with various forms of Chinese Communism, but always with an eye to a good business deal; whilst others have adopted neo-Victorian values, making this a book whose milieu is in a sort of Cyberpunk morphing into Steampunk.

It is a thick book, some 450 pages, but I found it fairly easy reading. My one observation is that the plot begins to race a bit in the last quarter, as the female protagonist reaches womanhood and her machine-led education comes to a climax just as the political situation undergoes a seismic change to a new reality. It was almost as if Stephenson was trying to tie the plot up - or at least bring it to a point where he could set it down and walk away from it without it looking too obviously abandoned - and I can quite see why his subsequent books are considerably longer. It's not the most blatant attempt to come in at a particular word-count, but I rather felt that that was what was happening. As it is, the main characters reach turning points in their lives and the life of the world, and there we leave them.

Still, this is one of the best science fiction novels I've read for a while. There are only a few signs of historical obsolescence; at one point, a company is referred to as a "zaibatsu" (a Japanese term for an interlocking business trust/oligarchy) which has rather fallen out of use in the 21st century (the word, that is, rather than the concept); and a particular manifestation of dust pollution is referrred to early on as "toner", implying that it is as fine and invasive as laser printer toner; the increasing roll-back of paper use in business will make this term seem quaint in just a few years' time, if it isn't already. And one of the groups mentioned a few times in the text calls itself 'Sendero', probably in reference to the 1980s Peruvian Maoist revolutionary movement 'Sendero Luminoso' ('Shining Path'). There were also a couple of suggestions, quite well buried, that the ambient morality of the world of the novel had perhaps turned backwards a little, and the implications of that for personal relationships might look distinctly 20th-century to us now.

But all in all, this is an impressive book. I now see where Stephenson gets his reputation from, and I shall look forward to tackling some of his other novels in due course.
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LibraryThing member endolith
"The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to
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believe in that code – but their children believe it for entirely different reasons."

"They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it."

"Yes. Some of them never challenge it – they grow up to be smallminded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel – as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw."

"Which path do you intend to take, Nell?" said the Constable, sounding very interested. "Conformity or rebellion?"

"Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded – they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity."
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LibraryThing member Rynooo
I was all set to give this 5/5 until the slapdash ending.
LibraryThing member alco261
The first few chapters made for some great reading...the rest was just typing.
LibraryThing member scistarz
I love rereading this book over and over. Set in the future, it takes a unique look at how the world's cultures will work out. The idea of a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer with all the tech involved really caught my eye on how much it was a perfect tutor. I want one!
LibraryThing member kristianbrigman
Stephenson is one of my favorite authors, and this book is a good example of his work. He clearly is leaning on the style of a Victorian novel, but the book covers many different cultures. In some ways, it's an investigation into culture under pressure from technology, and how cultures might
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incorporate technology without losing their base beliefs, and does so coherently.

The actual Princess Nell parts got a bit long at times, and I am not sure I actually read all of them. But the book is engrossing and creates an atmosphere more than a story. The ending is a bit jarring, simply because it seems to come out of nowhere, but it is not as nonsensical as it seems: as the world spins out of control, we focus in on just one person. In the end, through all the technophilia, the book ends up being about one child's search for a mother, and the ending is natural when looked at that way.
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LibraryThing member Mr_Blithe
One of the better concepts for a novel by an author known for his awesome concepts, and one of the worst endings by an author known for his terrible endings. "Snow Crash" had one of the most wicked awesome opening chapters of any book I've ever read and petered out to a decidedly yawn-inducing
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conclusion where very little was resolved. "Cryptonomicon" went on for 800 pages before we even knew what it was about and then ended with strange confluence of events that didn't seem to have warranted a Bible-length novel. Seriously, how is it that Neal Stephenson still feels like he needs to spend 300 to 1000 pages building up to some sort of climax in his books only to scramble to tie everything together in the final chapter or two? Stephenson could really have stood to siphon off a few hundred of those extra pages of irrelevant wankery found in "The Baroque Cycle" and transplanted them into "Diamond Age" in order to flesh out some of its (admittedly very interesting) examinations of Confucianism and the role of education in the development of exceptional personalities. As it stands, the novel sets everything up and then has a seizure and defecates all over itself during the climax; some characters do things that make no sense, some characters disappear, and the plot itself that had so long been advancing towards one thing takes a nonsensical turn and then crashes into the Pacific Ocean.
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LibraryThing member tikitu-reviews
Fun, shallow technophilia. Stephenson likes multiple plot threads, many characters coming and going, their actions weaving together into a complicated plot (complicated but not complex; eventful, but not difficult to follow). Light on characterisation, heavy on techno-social speculation.

The big
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flaw is his inability to invest the events and characters with emotional weight, despite some objectively pretty heavy stuff going down. It's light and fun until it isn't fun any more, then it's light and fast-paced action, but it never loses the lightness.

Presumably this is because Stephenson is most interested firstly in exploring the implications of his technology and social system (in the first half of the book) then in the second half, in unravelling the mess of plot strands he's tangled up and drawing them together into some sort of conclusion. There are signs of the plot bloat that comes to the fore in the Baroque Cycle; he doesn't really manage to tie up the threads in the space provided, but simply lets some characters wander offstage and hopes that we'll be distracted by the flashes and bangs going on at the same time...

Nothing is particularly thought-provoking or heart-wrenching, but it's fairly well-told and fun -- a perfect holiday read, but not something to spend hours searching for significance. Or writing a review about, for that matter.
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LibraryThing member aliceunderskies
Not Neal Stephenson's best, not even close. There were too many characters that I didn't care about, and I found myself really longing to skip huge sections--which is against my rules--just so I could get back to Nell and her education in awesomeness. Lately it seems I've been hampered by what I
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wish a book were rather than what it actually is: in this one I really wanted it to be just a story of the three Primer girls and the different ways they are shaped by it. At one point I had a glimmering of an amazing ending where the three would have some sort of revelatory intersection--not even an epic battle, though I must admit that the movie-watching, entertain-me! part of my brain longed for that--in which grand implications would abound. I'm not even sure what exactly I wanted implicated, but it definitely wasn't hive minds. In actuality, the end turned into a crazy crammed mess in which tons of things happened all at once and the few scenes that you really wanted were denied. NS is still one of my (two) favorite SF authors, and even this weak book is dazzling in its worldbuilding and delicious infodumping, but it didn't know what it wanted to be and so ended up rather confused and confusing.
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LibraryThing member maybedog
I think I maybe just don't like steampunk. I mean, why glorify such a horribly oppressive age as the Victorian Era?
LibraryThing member dkaine
Unsurprisingly, very intricate and intriguing book. Stephenson's sentences and paragraphs are meticulously crafted, with newly created words mingling with normal vocabulary and technical jargon seamlessly.

The possibilities extrapolated with the advent of nanotechnology is fascinating and described
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well enough to be so close to believable, and this excites me for the future and the technological advances that should come with it.

Overall really enjoyed the book, though not particularly satisfied with how the story was broken up. I am looking forward to re-reading Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash after picking this one up.
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LibraryThing member gregfromgilbert
You may need to be patient with this book since the setup introduces a nanotechnological world that is quite foreign. It also helps if you have some familiarity with nanotechnology (i.e. Drexler’s “Engines of Creation”. I had started this book years ago and then lost interest after the first
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50 pages. But I’m glad I gave it another shot. Vast in scope and vision Stephenson introduces so many cool ideas. I loved the story within a story, where the Primer is teaching Nell lessons of life, and the “logic castles” were really cool. The novel was complicated and rich enough to loose me every once in a while but the ending helped tie it all together. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member MoTown
Nowhere near as good as Snow Crash, but still worth a read.
LibraryThing member abitmorejerry
Seriously this book put me off reading for quite some time - I tried a number of times to get into it but just couldn't. It has a number of plots kicking off but most at a snails pace and the one that does finally crack the inertia of the book and gets going pretty much stops once you actually have
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a reason to start turning the pages. I hate it when I give up on a book and especially one from my favorite genre but of the many hundreds of books I have read this joins the scrap heap of three in total which I couldn't finish. Hopefully some day I will try again but probably not.
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Awards

Hugo Award (Nominee — Novel — 1996)
Nebula Award (Nominee — Novel — 1996)
Locus Award (Finalist — Science Fiction Novel — 1996)
Arthur C. Clarke Award (Shortlist — 1996)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1995-02

Physical description

455 p.; 6.25 inches

ISBN

0553096095 / 9780553096095
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