Decades into our future, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful Neo-Victorians. Hes made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called a young ladys illustrated primer, designed to raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. Unfortunately, for Hackworth, he loses his smuggled copy to a gang of street urchins in a mugging. One of the young thugs presents the primer to his little sister, Nell and suddenly her life - and perhaps the whole future of humanity - is about to be decoded and reprogrammed...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. Author Biography Neal Stephenson has published four novels: The Big U, Zodiac, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. For the last of these he won a 1996 Hugo Award. He also writes (with J. Frederick George) as Stephen Bury. Their books are Interface and Cobweb. Most of his books are published in Penguin. He lives in Seattle, where he is at work on other novels.