The Diamond Age

Decades from now, near Shanghai, nanotechnologist John Percival Hackworth is hired to build an advanced interactive book for the granddaughter of a duke. It is called A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Hackworth secretly makes an illegal copy for his own daughter.

He is attacked in the street, and the stolen copy never reaches her. Instead it passes to Nell, a girl from the thetes, the poor underclass who belong to no tribe. Her brother Harv brings it home.

The Primer is designed to raise a child capable of independent thought. It instructs Nell with interactive fairy tales, and the tales become harder as her abilities develop. Over time it reshapes her upbringing and opens a way out of the life she was born into.

Hackworth's story runs alongside hers. Once his theft is exposed, neo-Victorian society casts him out. Protocol Enforcement and criminal factions both chase him while he searches for a mysterious figure called the Alchemist.

This is science fiction built as a coming-of-age story, following Nell as she grows up. Her time is split between the Primer's virtual world and a real one divided among rival subcultures called phyles. The consequences of one father's crime spread outward through both strands, so the book moves between a child's fairy-tale lessons and a fugitive's pursuit.