It is to some extent a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life.

[1] The Diamond Age depicts a near-future world revolutionised by advances in nanotechnology, much as Eric Drexler envisioned it in his 1986 nonfiction book Engines of Creation.

Major cities have immune systems made up of aerostatic defensive micromachines, and public matter compilers provide basic food, blankets, and water for free to anyone who requests them.

The hierarchic nature of the Feed and an alternative, anarchic developing technology, known as the Seed, mirror the cultural conflict between East and West that is depicted in the book.

The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Territories, a lowland slum built on the artificial, diamondoid island of New Chusan, located offshore from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai.

The story follows Nell's development under the tutelage of the Primer, and to a lesser degree, the lives of Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw and Fiona Hackworth, Neo-Victorian girls who receive other copies.

Michael Berry of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Stephenson's world-building skills are extraordinary, and while he sometimes lets his narrative ramble or grow complicated, he can be depended upon to serve up plenty of clever extrapolations.

"[4] Gerald Jonas of The New York Times: "While the final chapters of the novel veer toward the stylistic excesses that marred Snow Crash, Mr. Stephenson mostly holds to his theme.

"[5] Marc Laidlaw of Wired magazine praised the characters, the setting, and called the "rich and polished, the inventiveness unceasing" but found it ultimately disappointing saying Stephenson "gave himself an enormous task and nearly succeeded in all respects, instead of "merely" most of them.

[9] According to a June 2009 report in Variety, Zoë Green had been hired to write the series, with George Clooney and Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions as executive producers on the project.