/lit/ - Literature

So, for some reason I went back to 1995 and read The Diamond Age. I guess I had just heard too many incidental references to it lately. Some of the sci-fi concepts are obviously highly in vogue right now, which would explain why, but reading it was a pretty mixed experience. Starts off rough, a lot of rough patches throughout, and basically no satisfying ending. As a not-too-distant-future story written from that uniquely early-90s "End of History" perspective, its "unrealistic" worldbuilding was a lot more jarring than that in even slightly older novels, like from the 80s (the premise of the setting is neo-colonialism in China). I don't think sci-fi writers should be forced to try to make reasonable "predictions"--they are not futurists--they should be as creative as they want. But it's kind of hard not to see it as a failure of imagination when Stephenson suggests that in this world of nanotech and powerful AI, machines wouldn't be able to convincingly imitate human voices (for example).

If it sounds like I'm missing the point of the book, I guess that's because I'm trying to put my finger on exactly what about it occasionally brought me out of the story. Obviously, it's really the story of Nell, the main character, which is as gripping and tragic as it needs to be to make up for any complaints I have written above.
Actually, I think it would make a good TV series. It wouldn't have to follow exactly the same plot, but there would still be plenty of room for all the best characters. I would really like to see Judge Fang, the Confucian judge with a Hong Kong-Brooklyn accent, wheeling and dealing with the Master's wisdom on screen.