The Diamond Age

the second major character. He is an upper-level engineer at Bespoke and develops the code for the Primer. He makes an illicit copy of the primer for... his daughter, who is Nell's age. When his crime is detected, he is forced to become a double agent in a covert power struggle between the Victorians and the Confucians. He is forced to spend ten years with a colony of "Drummers," to use their distributed intelligence for the development of a new technology, the Seed. He turns out to be the mysterious figure he was supposedly sent to find, The Alchemist.From http://en.wikipedia.
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Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name was originally coined by Bruce Bethke... as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983. It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order. Cyberpunk works are well situated within postmodern literature. Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations, and tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation or Frank Herbert's Dune. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to be marked by extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its creators . Much of the genre's atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction.
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Postcyberpunk describes a subgenre of science fiction which some critics suggest has evolved from cyberpunk. Like its predecessor, postcyberpunk... focuses on technological developments in near-future societies, typically examining the social effects of a ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, genetic engineering, modification of the human body, and the continued impact of perpetual technological change. Unlike "pure" cyberpunk, however, the works in this category feature characters who act to improve social conditions or at least protect the status quo from further decay. The term "postcyberpunk" was first used circa 1991 to describe Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Lawrence Person argued that the term should be applied to an emergent subgenre of science fiction, which he proceeded to identify. In 1998, he published an article called "Notes Towards a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" in the small-press magazine Nova Express; the next year, he posted the article to the technology website Slashdot.
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Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but... rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical, cinematic or musical work. Fiction contrasts with non-fiction, which deals exclusively with factual events, descriptions, observations, etc. . Realistic fiction, although untrue, could actually happen. Some events, people, and places may even be real. This is termed "faction". It can be possible that in the future imagined events could physically happen. For example, Jules Verne's novel From The Earth To The Moon, which at that time was just a product of his rich imagination, was proven possible in 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon, and the team returned safely to Earth. Realistic fiction strives to make the reader feel as if they're reading something that is actually happening—something that though not real, is described in a believable way that helps the reader make a picture as if it were an actual event.
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Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural... fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as related static, motion, and virtual arts. Speculative fiction as a category ranges from ancient works to both cutting edge, paradigm-changing and neotraditional works of the 21st century. Speculative fiction can be recognized in works whose authors' intentions or the social contexts of the versions of stories they portrayed is now known, since ancient Greek dramatists such as Euripides whose play Medea seems to have offended Athenian audiences when he fictionally speculated that shamaness Medea killed her own children instead of their being killed by other Corinthians after her departure, and whose Hippolytus, narratively introduced by Aphrodite, Goddess of Love in person, is suspected to have displeased his contemporary audiences because he portrayed Phaedra as too lusty.
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