The Diamond Age

I consolidated the comments for my reference later. Someone else might also find it useful: # Fiction Books Recommended for Programmers (HN Thread 46128404) ## Adrian Tchaikovsky - *Children of Time* — Science Fiction (Evolution, Space Opera) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-time) ## Rick Cook — Wizardry Series - *Wizard’s Bane* — Fantasy, Programming/Magic Mashup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112616.Wizard_s_Bane - *Wizardry Series (overview)* https://www.goodreads.com/series/43084-wiz ## James P. Hogan - *Inherit the Stars* — Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/743568.Inherit_the_Stars - *Code of the Lifemaker* — Sci-Fi, Artificial Life https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifem... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifemaker) - *The Two Faces of Tomorrow* — AI, Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_Tomorrow) ## D. F. Jones — Colossus Trilogy - *Colossus* — AI, Classic Sci-Fi Thriller…

Anathem and The Diamond Age too

Fiction: - "The Dark Forest" by Liu Cixin and the whole Three Body Problem/Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. Truly massive, grand SciFi. Would recommend 10/10. [HN] - "Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy. Made me face deeper parts of my mind. Attempted to answer some questions I had. Great story. Huge book. Historical fiction is something I like across languages. - "Candide" by Voltaire. Genuinely fun and entertaining, besides it being- you know- Voltaire. - "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson. Very good story, world buulding, nice technology. Great thinking by the author. Non Fiction: - "Fermat's Last Theorem" by Simon Singh. Was very happy to see a Popular Math book where there are so many Popular Science books. Great book. Goes over FMT's solving history, with many many fun anecdotes, short biographies, etc. Truly enjoyable to read. - "Code Book" by Simon Singh. Genuinely fun and learned a lot. Cryptography's history, progress, and so much more. [HN] Self-Help:…

With a character named Jiro Protagonist, this is a clue that perhaps it is less cyberpunk and more of a satire of cyberpunk. It's very good, of course. Also recommended from Neal Stephenson: The Diamond Age. His world building is always top-notch, never more than in that one, IMHO.

* Greg Egan’s short story collections, Diaspora, and Permutation City. Fair warning, Egan puts the “hard” in “hard sci-fi”. * Haven’t finished the Expanse final trilogy, but I really enjoyed the first two. * The Wool series * Project Hail Mary, for story reasons I’d recommend the audio book. * We Are Bob trilogy, fourth book is garbage. * Old Man’s War * The Culture Series by Ian Banks * If you enjoyed Seveneves, and thus can tolerate Stephenson’s consistent habit to drop the ball in the last 20% of his books, Diamond Age is enjoyable.

My absolute favorite is Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, The Jagged Orbit was also excellent. Other than that, of course Snow Crash is a masterpiece, but I think my favorite Stephenson book is The Diamond Age. Another excellent one is Daemon by Daniel Suarez whose books are quite fascinating and look at generally pretty topical plotlines (I was just thinking I have to revisit his book Kill Decision about AI enabled killer drones).

Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others is the best, single-author collection of short stories I've ever read. If you like that, you might also enjoy The Lifecycle of Software Objects, an absolutely heartbreaking novella about simulated children, and his follow-up collection Exhalation. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is fantastic, and it's follow-up, Speaker for the Dead is even better, and my favorite science fiction novel of all time. They won back to back Hugo and Nebula awards. Card is a polarizing figure for his outspoken political opinions, but if ever the art should be separated from the artist, it's Speaker, which is an incredible exploration of empathy and responsibility, in addition to being a gripping, action-packed, science-literate read. Many more in this series, if you get into it.…

Try Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age :)

William Gibson. The Bridge trilogy and the Sprawl trilogy, at a minimum. They still feel like maps to the future even now. You have to work at it, the map is not the territory after all, but the realisations about the impact of technology, progress, and the choices we make when we let society work a certain way have been profound, for me at least. Also The Peripheral, and Gibson’s essay in Wired about undersea cables, and... yeah. Having read Gibson feels like a superpower. As others have said: - The Hitch Hiker’s Guide - Stepehnson’s Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Seveneves, Anathem (aside: totally surprised how much love there is for Anathem, I remember it not being received very kindly at the time by people around me, though I liked it.) - The Culture series (special shout out to The Player of Games.)

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, for a coming of age story, using nanotechnology as a futuristic concept for understanding the differences of being fed one's needs and being given the tools for meeting them. Steinbeck's East of Eden for coming to grips with a fundamental moral struggle of what is good and what is choice. Anything ever written by Kurt Vonnegut for the proper cynicism needed to live in this world. Oscar Wilde for that same cynicism minus the science fiction, plus more witty one liners.

Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson: I assume a HN classic. Good read nonetheless. Crazy imaginative. Prior experience with Stephenson is limited to Snowcrash, which I found to be quite good as well. Benjamin Franklin - Walter Isaacson: Biographies are immensely underrated. A good biography has had the effect of raising my own aspirations by orders of magnitude. Not sure what it is exactly about them. Being reminded that accomplished figures were humans first and foremost is always good. Either way, struck by the practicality of the man -- something I'm looking to emulate in my own life.

"Blindsight" by Peter Watts "Solaris" and "Summa Technologiae" by Stanislav Lem "Dune" by Frank Herbert "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson

Central Station by Lavie Tidhar is an amazing charming story of a world deeply steeped old sitting baking world where new things are coming about. It is charm & delight in the purest & simplest. Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. "Robert Charles Wilson is a hell of a storyteller," said Stephen King and this wonderful tour through time and space, humanity & people's lives is incredible. The Quantum Thief series by Hannu Rajaniemi is open, scenic, wild, & so so vivid, one of the most beautiful worlds I've ever visited, & it reminds me so much of a joyous wild swashbuckling run. The mystery of the main character is enchanting. Infoquake series by David Louis Edelson is a gripping suspenseful rise of a star entrepreneur that redefines and radically expands the world, amid an already boisterous & full & busy beautiful world already overflowing in seamless technology everywhere. Although the plot line whips along with some suspense & tension, the scenery and the voyage is incredible.…

I particularly enjoyed Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (won the Hugo Award) and Liu Cixin's collection of short stories, The Wandering Earth.

+1 Anything Gibson, especially Sprawl Trilogy Anything Stephenson, though I particularly liked Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and Snow Crash, In the beginning was the command line.. oh, I like everything by him. Seriously though, In the beginning was the command line and Cryptonomicon are basically an ode to 90s hacker culture, the true neckbeard type of CS. Love that aesthetic, culture and ethics.

For me it is Zodiac, Snow Crash and Diamond Age.

The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson.

It's half novel, half related series of 9 short stories, but Accelerando is great. The Martian by Andy Weir (movie based on it) was quite good. Daemon I think also qualifies, though it's SF dressed up as a thriller. Oh, Blood Music by Greg Bear probably counts? Except maybe the ending? Tempted to mention The Diamond Age, but not sure that qualifies as "Hard", though closer than some other Stephenson maybe...

The society of mind and the diamond age !

Great science fiction book covering the topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age Ideas from that book come up once a week in conversations.

The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson. AR plays a heavy role in it (and it is my favorite Stephenson novel). Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami. I can't say much about it without ruining it.

I liked "snow crash" and "the diamond age", but found "cryptonomicon" hard to get through, even though it's super popular among geeks. I think even if I ever get to the end of this one, I won't be reading anything from him for a while though.

Diamond age: a young ladies illustrated primer. Anathem. Halting state. Accelerando. Rant: an oral biography of buster casey. Enders game. The laundry files.

Diamond Age is one of those awesome books where what you get out of it depends on where you are in life. I read it both before children and after children. I enjoyed it both times. But it was a different experience.

I have two ultimate faves:- Accelerando (Charlie Stross) - truly epic, hard-scifi, from near to far future, truly hardcore Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson) - awesome tale, plenty of nanotech, almost fairy-tale-esque [Edit: formatting]

I advise reading good fiction, especially "hard sci-fi", to get your mind in a good place for the startup scene. Like most people on HN probably would, I recommend reading Neil Stephenson's books, especially Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age and Snowcrash (in order descending order of subjective of relevance).

What did you like about it? I'd suggest Tad Williams' Otherland, Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age & Snow Crash, and Gibson's Pattern Recognition purely based on subject matter (gamey-cyberpunk-ARG-AI), but none is quite as lighthearted in terms of nodding towards videogame culture.

Ah, yes, I loved the Diamond Age also. Actually, I think I've read almost everything by Neal Stephenson.

I'd suggest The Diamond Age as a logical continuation from Snow Crash because it's also awesome and because it's very (very) loosely a sequel. It has a different tone and pace and theme, however.

Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are good books, especially for just starting to read again. Ubik is my favorite PKD book followed closely by Electric Sheep. The His Dark Materials isn't really sci-fi so much as fantasy but it is quite a good read (though if you didn't have a kindle it might be embarrassing buying them from the young adult section, they are quite adult though). I think a huge thing missing from your list is the Foundation series from Asimov (I recommend going in order of publishing, start with Foundation move onto Foundation and Empire then Second Foundation and more if you are into it). My 2 cents.

"The Diamond Age" or anything else by Neal Stephenson.

It's older, but I really enjoyed Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

I'm a big fan of Sci-Fi because I feel it makes people think about what they want the future to be, as well as avoiding the re-hashing of historical and current events that many fiction books set in the present do. With that in mind a list of great books to read: The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson Gridlinked - Neal Asher Neuromancer - William Gibson The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton The Dreaming Void - Peter F. Hamilton Fallen Dragon - Peter F. Hamilton Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan Market Forces - Richard Morgan Blindsight - Peter Watts The Electric Church - Jeff Somers Tunnel in the Sky - Robert A. Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein 1984 - George Orwell

The Machinery of Freedom (David Friedman) -- Great book on a potential anarcho-capitalist society and how we could push the US government in that direction. The Game (Neil Strauss) -- See nopassrecover's response; he explained it well. Little Brother (Cory Doctorow) -- A fantastic novel about freedom and technology. Makers (Cory Doctorow) -- A great novel about people who create, whether technology or business models. Perhaps the best book I read this year. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Cory Doctorow) -- The story of a man working in Disney World, which is now part of the Bitchun Society (a post-scarcity, post-death society). A story of love, betrayal, and death; how can you go wrong? Worth it for the concept of Whuffie (you'll need to read it to really get it) alone. Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson) -- The evolution of a society towards post-scarcity, written around the story of a young girl's growth into an adult. Best post-cyberpunk book written thus far, IMO.

only two ? tough! The diamond age Manifold: time edit: this thread is going to seriously mess with my productivity in the next couple of weeks.

I find that reading fiction on vacation really stimulates my programming brain. There's a lot to be said for letting your mind roam free for a bit. I believe PG talks about the value of letting your mind roam in one of his essays (or possibly Hackers and Painters). In particular, I've found Neal Stephenson's books to be great for this purpose. If you haven't read Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, or Diamond Age, I would suggest reading one of them. It will satisfy your need for some "geek" content on vacation, without being all business.

I'm a fan of The Diamond Age, myself. I found it inspirational that nanotechnology could make the fulfillment of basic needs effectively free, that creating programs could translate into creating real objects, and that an interactive device could amplify learning.

Hmmm. Diamond Age didn't do it for me for some reason. I liked it but not nearly as much as Cryptonomicon. But I have had several people tell me the same thing that you did wrt DA, so it just must be me.

Same, and with special emphasis on The Diamond Age. Also Douglas Adams, Vernor Vinge, Richard K. Morgan, and all kinds of other stuff. I like to read almost as much as I like to program. Best nonfiction I have read in a while: "Leaving Microsoft To Change The World" by John Wood. A Microsoft VP leaves to pursue his dream of changing the world with books, and ends up founding Room to Read (http://www.roomtoread.org/ .) Highly recommended.