The Diamond Age

CULT AUTHOR NEAL STEPHENSON'S UNSTOPPABLE SCI-FI CLASSIC 
 
The future is small. The future is nano . . . 
 
And who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell - an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nanotechnology? 
 
Well, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous. 
 
And it isn't Nell's. It was stolen. And now some very powerful people want to get their hands on this highly desirable object. Nell is about to discover that the world can feel very small indeed . . . 
 
'6.0 stars. Among the best books I have ever read' GoodReads Review 
 
'If Snow Crash was so good that cyberpunk went in to a coma, The Diamond Age effectively pulled the plug' GoodReads Review 
 
'This is Great Expectations with nanotechnology' GoodReads Review

A brilliant, tricky, twenty-first-century version of Pygmalion

A wealth of hip, social and technological riffs, stories-within-stories and not a few good jokes. Invest

The Quentin Tarantino of postcyberpunk science fiction. Stephenson has upped the form's ante with rambunctious glee

A new era in science fiction. People will walk around slack-jawed for days and reemerge with a radically redefined sense of reality

Establishes Stephenson as a powerful voice for the cyber age. At once whimsical, satirical, and cautionary

Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic 'The Baroque Cycle' (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World) as well as the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age (winner of a Hugo Award), Snow Crash, Zodiac, Anathem and Reamde. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

A new look for cult author Stephenson's unstoppable sci-fi classic 
 
The future is small. The future is nano . . . 
And who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell - an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nano-technology? 
Well, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous. 
And it isn't Nell's. It was stolen. And now some very powerful people want to get their hands on this highly desirable object. Nell is about to discover that the world can feel very small indeed . . . 
 
Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic 'The Baroque Cycle' (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World) as well as the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age (winner of a Hugo Award), Snow Crash, Zodiac, Anathem and Reamde. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Cobweb

A gloriously prescient and satirically witty thriller of the first Iraq war, which suggests that Saddam was making biological weapons in Iowa, by the authors of Interface. A Manchurian Candidate for our time.

Praise for Neal Stephenson: 
I have seldom felt such humble, intoxicated, euphoric and droolingly grateful awe as before Neal Stephenson's ... Baroque Cycle

The Confusion 
Ideas about currency and calculus become thrilling because of the way Stephenson incorporates them into his story ... Huge in scope ... rich in detail ... This weird, wonderful collision of scholarship and storytelling has no peer

Quicksilver: 
A tour-de-force ... Dense, witty, erudite and gripping, Quicksilver is ... an indication that Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is shaping up to be a far more impressive literary endeavour than most so-called "serious" fiction. No scholarly, and intellectually provocative, historical novel has been this much fun since The Name of the Rose

Cryptonomicon: 
The Gravity's Rainbow of the information age ... an astonishing, monumental performance; and if the rumours of a sequel are true, I can hardly wait

Neal Stephenson is the author of The Baroque Trilogy (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System Of The World). His other books include Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Zodiac, as well as Cobweb and Interface, written in collaboration with Frederick George. He lives in Seattle.

The Gulf War is imminent and there's something mighty strange going on in the Agriculture Department of East Iowa University. When an Arab student turns up drunk - and dead - in the lake, redneck Deputy County Sheriff Clyde Banks gets a feeling he's on to something big. It's a suspicion shared by low-ranking CIA agent Betsy Vandeventer. 
 
But before two great minds yell conspiracy theory, in steps top US policy-maker James Millikan. 
Here's a man well used to dictating the Middle East's future - from a comfortable seat at a top Paris restaurant. While shenanigans in the Midwest might not be exactly his style, there's a technique that serves America well in all matters of national security. It's called the 'Cobweb', and it backfires every time...

The System Of The World

The third and final volume of the Baroque Cycle.

Neal Stephenson has saved the best until last with The System of the World, a fittingly breathtaking conclusion to his Baroque Cycle, implausibly trumping all of the trilogy's previous strengths, but unfortunately introducing one weakness in that the whole rambunctiously magnificent undertaking had to end

Historical fiction was never this much fun - or this successful

Neal Stephenson is the bestselling author of Reamde, Anathem; the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World); Cryptonomicon; The Diamond Age; Snow Crash, which was named one of Time magazine's top one hundred all-time best English-language novels; and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Neal Stephenson follows his highly-praised historical novels, Quicksilver and The Confusion, with the extraordinary third and final volume of the Baroque Cycle. 
 
The year is 1714. Daniel Waterhouse has returned to England, where he joins forces with his friend Isaac Newton to hunt down a shadowy group attempting to blow up Natural Philosophers with 'Infernal Devices' - time bombs. As Daniel and Newton conspire, an increasingly vicious struggle is waged for England's Crown: who will take control when the ailing queen dies? 
 
Tories and Whigs clash as one faction jockeys to replace Queen Anne with 'The Pretender' James Stuart, and the other promotes the Hanoverian dynasty of Princess Caroline. Meanwhile, a long-simmering dispute between Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz comes to a head, with potentially cataclysmic consequences. 
 
Wildly inventive, brilliantly conceived, The System of the World is the final volume in Neal Stephenson's hugely ambitious and compelling saga. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters in a time of genius, discovery and change, the Baroque Cycle is a magnificent and unique achievement.

The Confusion

Neal Stephenson follows his acclaimed historical novel, Quicksilver, with the extraordinary second volume of the Baroque Cycle.

Ideas about currency and calculus become thrilling because of the way Stephenson incorporates them into his story... Huge in scope - rich in detail... This weird, wonderful collision of scholarship and storytelling has no peer

A rip-roaring, swashbuckling Romance with a capital R ... A blood-soaked, silver-plated depiction of 17th-century life from both ends of the economic scale, and with enough headlong, balls-to-the-wall buccaneering and Machiavellian plotting to satiate the most jaded of palates

Stephenson excels in marrying geekspeak wtih riotous action. When he describes a battle or a duel, his prose acquires thrilling panache... Jack Shaftoe is magnificent, a swashbuckling hero with a foul mouth and few morals, and his adventures are most appealing

The definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-pirate-comedy-punk-love story. No easy feat, that

Neal Stephenson continues his extraordinary Baroque Cycle in this sequel to his bestselling Quicksilver, bringing to life a cast of unforgettable characters in a time of breathtaking genius and discovery. 
 
It is the late 1600s, on the high seas. A group of Barbary galley slaves plot as they ply the oars of a pirate ship, hatching a daring scheme to find an enormous cache of Spanish gold. Amazingly, they succeed - leaving some very unhappy men behind who vow to hunt down the vagabonds and bring them to justice, no matter the cost. 
 
Meanwhile, back in France, the beautiful Eliza - toast of Versailles and spy extraordinaire - attempts to return to London with her baby, a child whose paternity is shrouded in mystery. Making her way home, her ship is stopped by a French privateer and she is returned to the Sun King's court. Thrown back into a web of international intrigue, Eliza must contend with all manner of characters, including buccaneers, poisoners, Jesuits, financial manipulators, and even a stray cryptographer or two...

Quicksilver

The first novel in Neal Stephenson's acclaimed Baroque Cycle.

[A] massive tour-de-force- Dense, witty, erudite, packed with fascinating characters, and gripping despite a distended length, Quicksilver is both a worthy prequel to Cryptonomicon, and an indication that Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is shaping up to be a far more impressive literary endeavour than most so-called "serious" fiction - No scholarly, and intellectually provocative, historical novel has been this much fun since The Name of the Rose.

Staggering diversity and detail ... An astonishing achievement.

A great, heaving countryside of a book...consistently funny...fluent and elusive, while retaining just the right hint of poison

Stephenson mixes a library’s worth of ideas with compulsive derring-do … its scope and inventiveness become addictive.

A breathless ride…the writing gives an immersive sense of time and place

A brilliant, bulging historical novel ... Thrillingly accomplished ... Magnificent ... one finishes it already eager to begin the sequel

As extraordinary an achievement as Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver is Neal Stephenson's first novel in his acclaimed Baroque Cycle. 
 
 
Neal Stephenson follows his international bestseller, the WWII thriller Cryptonomicon, with a novel set in the 16th and 17th centuries, in a world of war, scientific, religious and political turmoil. 
 
With a cast of characters that includes Newton, Leibniz, Christopher Wren, Charles II, Cromwell and the young Benjamin Franklin, Stephenson again shows his extraordinary ability to get inside a place and time; as he did for the futures of his science fiction (Snowcrash,The Diamond Age) and for WWII (Cryptonomicon), here he does for the England of the Civil War and the Europe of the Wars of Religion and the Scientific Revolution. Quicksilver is yet another tour-de-force from a writer who is simply unique.

Interface

First published seven years ago, under the pseudonym Stephen Bury, Interface is a gloriously funny satirical thriller, written by Neal Stephenson with his uncle. Stephenson at his brilliant best.

A Manchurian Candidate for the computer age

Neal Stephenson was born in 1959 in Maryland. He now lives in Seattle. His books include Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon.

'A Manchurian Candidate for the computer age' Seattle WeeklyThere's no way William A. Cozzano can lose the upcoming presidential election. He's a likeable Midwestern governor with one insidious advantage. An advantage provided by a shadowy group of backers. A biochip inside his head wires him to a computerized polling system. The mood of the electorate is channelled directly into his brain. Forget issuesForget policy             He's more than the perfect candidate - he's a special effect.

Neal Stephenson

In the Metaverse - cyberspace home to avatars and software daemons - there is a new drug available: Snow Crash. A cyberdrug that reduces avatars in the digital world to dust, it also infects users in real life, leaving them in a vegetative state. 
 
This is bad news for Hiro, a freelance hacker and the Metaverse's best swordfighter, and mouthy skateboard courier Y. T. Together, investigating the Infocalypse, they trace back the roots of language itself to an ancient Sumerian priesthood and find they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.

Neal Stephenson

Books by Neal Stephenson

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter