Neal Stephenson: 'The Diamond Age'.

(This is the first post in a series of reviews of scinece fiction books. The Diamond Age was Neal Stephensons second cyberpunk novel (and included in Bruce Sterlings canon of cyberpunk). I wrote the review seven or eight years ago.)

The Diamond Age is a novel about learning.

Nell lives with her mother Tequila, brother Harv and the many changing men of her mother. Harv is trying to protect Nell against the abuses and brutality of these men. He's also a member of a gang, that carry out lowscale violent criminal activities. Like mugging. One day he brings home a book, that he has stolen. He gives it to Nell. And the book changes the trajectory of her life.

It's a very special book. It contains the ability to evaluate the young female owners situation and provide her with stories that reflects the collective consciousness of humanity (adventures / folklore and the like). But the book tells the stories in new ways and uses archtypical characters, that seem to be adequate to the young females present needs.

Nell learns a lot of useful things (from or with the help of the book?) and she begins to take responsability of her life.

Questions raised:

Do we / you learn from books / media or from life / experience? If you basically learn from life / experience, what is it then, that you learn from books? Or in other words: What is it, that you experience, when reading or are being told stories / tales? Can new interactive media 'do' something other, than traditionally books can't (yes they're ubiquetuous and discrete)? How is the teacher affected (learning), when teaching? How is the author of books / media affected when playing the role of teacher.?

Ideas visualised:

• Ractives, an interactive trivimedia
  

• Matter Compilers, nanotecnological device, that can be programmed to produce almost anything
  

• Phyles and tribes, societal form becoming more important than nationstates
  

• The Networked Society (infrastructure, culture, behaviour, technology etc.)

• Schools as a power enforcing structure.

Science Fiction

Some people think that Science Fiction is about the future. I think it is about the present. The specific means and ways of telling the stories in the genre of SF allows to tell something about crucial but maybe not very clear developments (and hopes or aspirations) in society, culture, living and thinking.

I believe that there are two kinds of Science Fiction:

• Stories that share some of the genre features, symbols or narratives (space- and timetravels, goes on in cyberspace, pseudo-hard-science-language, aliens etc), but the stories are basically plain suspence stories. To me that's BAD or boring science fiction.

• Stories that are kind of coments to (or in other ways are relevant to) contemporary scientific, philosophical, societal, cultural, technological problems or issues. These stories can also be very entertaining, humorous and thrilling (they should be!). And that's what I call GOOD science fiction.