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 The Diamond Age |
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The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson There is a certain kind of hotel for the rich: when you enter it, it looks like a classic palace, with period furniture and beautiful pieces of art. You might think you have entered another century, when the rich had a lot of comfort and service. When you check in, you notice that the man behind the desk is using a computer and a telephone, both not visible for the guests who cross the foyer. In the room you have booked, the classic design of the furniture hides a HD-televisionset in full digital stereo, a DVD-player, a minibar, and other ultra-modern techniques. However, in cheaper hotels they picked up the idea as well, but the facade is not made of real wood - instead cardboard is used, and the illusion is as thin as that. I got this idea of a cheap hotel while reading The Diamond Age. It has been advertised as a steampunk novel, but in my opinion it is only a cardboard facade that yells steampunk, and the future techniques of cyberpunk shines strongly through it. The basic setting of the story is a future Earth, more specific: a future China. The happy few are living in this setting in a neo-Victorian way, copying social behaviour and artifacts from the Victorian past. But behind all these copies works a cyberpunk like science fiction of nanotechnology. Or in other words: the nanotechnology helps the neo-Victorians to live out their love for the nineteenth century. The idea of a future where the do’s and don’t of the Victorian Age are copied is good enough for steampunk, but in this case it just doesn’t get the hang of that steampunk feeling. Every time you read about the classic steampunk things in this book, you know is fake, and worse, you know the characters know it’s fake as well. The characters are flirting and showing off with the looks of the Victorian past, without catching the spirit behind it. It’s probably more the way it’s written that doesn’t make the book convincible steampunk. Not all characters are neo-Victorians, and they live in what cyberpunk calls “sprawls”: large areas where the poor dwell and try to make a living - it’s all dirt and desperation there. The element of China kicks in with more classic Confucian philosophy and architecture, and sometimes, the neo-Victorians and the Confucians mix, but the Confucians seem to be stronger described, pushing back the neo-Victorians to the chorus line. Furthermore, the focus lays heavy on the description of the technology. It’s not heavy gears and steam that put the technology in motion, but elegant nanotechnology that runs on a power-supply that is in swing with nature. This is all right for a cyberpunk story, mind you, but it distracts from the neo-Victorian ways. Basic technology, for a fact, does not know virtues or sins, and therefore cannot be the vehicle of ideas. It’s just there and it’s the characters in the story that have to give this technology a meaning. Unfortunately, they don’t in The Diamond Age, and the nanotechnology is just a backdrop that tries to feature on the world stage. Another point I found very distracting was the choice of words. Now I have to confess I read the Dutch translation, but I can’t imagine it is translated so badly that the original is totally hidden. I think that Victorians and neo-Victorians in literature must have some kind of vocabulary that somehow stands out as “Victorian” and reflects the social communication of the period. But instead, I read words that were in fashion during the Disco Age of the mid-seventies. The dialogues are in my eyes much too modern, like the feelings of the characters - it’s all a bit unbalanced and illogic. Once again, was this a cyberpunk novel I wouldn’t have mind, but it just doesn’t pull me into steampunk or Victorian sentiment. This gets somewhat better in de first half of the second part, but imagining yourself in some (Neo)Victorian setting didn’t work for me. The theme of the novel is not very clear in the beginning, it takes 200 pages to get a bit of feeling for it and to understand how the storylines are intertwined. At points, I thought I should stop reading because it was just not interesting enough as a story. And the end came all of a sudden, like Stephenson was suddenly hurried to finish the story and had to make some less convincible solutions in the plot. And there are too many seen-it-all-before ideas, a classic parade of cyberpunk stereotypes. Those who do know steampunk and like to start reading cyberpunk might enjoy this, for them it will be all new. The novel is about a book. The book has nanotechnology in it, and is programmed to learn little girls how to improve their lives. It’s totally interactive. The development of the book is ordered by a person from the upper class, so his granddaughter can use it. But an illegal copy is made and gets into the hands of the wrong persons... Surrounding this is a lot of intrigue, betrayal, and ideas on how to act as a gentleman in confronting situations. The second plot line is about a little girl who learns how to survive in this future world. It is the book that teaches her. Now there are some interesting ideas behind the plot lines, but in my opinion they were not worked out to the max; they came flying by as ideas and nowhere they are really discussed or countered; it didn’t make me think. All a bit too easy and to tech minded. © Yaghish 2003 |
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