The Diamond Age

The Diamond Age: or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 1995. It won both the Hugo and Locus Awards for Best Novel in 1996. Set in a future—roughly around the year 2025—in which cybernetics and information technology have permeated all areas of life, The Diamond Age presents an imagined world at once realistic and fantastic: nanotechnology has rendered most conventional weapons obsolete; information can be instantly transmitted over vast distances via nanosensory flecks implanted in people’s foreheads; and characters have become so skillful at manipulating virtual reality that they can lose themselves within it for days at a time.