“The Diamond Age”

In Neal Stephenson's sci-fi thriller a nanotech supercomputer known as "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" falls into the hands of an underprivileged girl whose life is about to change drastically.

In Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age,” set decades in the future a stone’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 Lady’s Illustrated Primer.” Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild and stolen for Hackworth’s own daughter, the Primer exists 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 thetes — members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian — Hackworth — in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer.