If the way the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer and matter compilers in The Diamond Age work like near-mystical artifacts hooked you, this post-human caper will delight you. Rajaniemi’s gevulot privacy tech, exomemory, and living architectures echo the Primer’s seemingly magical guidance of Nell—only now you’re chasing a master thief across a baroque Martian society where information is power and reality is programmable.

If you loved how Stephenson fleshed out neo-Victorian phyles, thetes, and the teeming strata around Judge Fang’s Shanghai and Hackworth’s circles, Miéville’s New Crobuzon offers an equally immersive panorama. You’ll wander from khepri artist districts to factories of Remade laborers, with strange sciences (crisis energy, thaumaturgy) that mirror the dense, system-level texture of matter compilers and nanotech guilds in The Diamond Age.

If the clash between Vickys, thetes, and cryptic power-brokers like Lord Finkle-McGraw and Dr. X intrigued you, Le Guin’s twin-world study of Anarres and Urras will scratch the same itch. Like Judge Fang’s legal-philosophical interventions, Shevek’s journey dissects property, status, and gatekeeping—asking who benefits when rules are written, and how one person’s breakthrough can ripple through rigid hierarchies.

If Nell’s growth—from a vulnerable thete to a self-directed young woman shaped by the Primer’s lessons and Miranda’s quiet care—moved you, Ged’s path will resonate. His training, mistakes, and reckoning with the shadow he unleashes carry the same intimate stakes: knowledge confers power, but character determines how it’s used—a theme that echoes Hackworth’s compromises and Nell’s choices in The Diamond Age.

If the Primer’s fairy tales—mirroring Nell’s life and subtly steering her choices—fascinated you, Cloud Atlas’s nested narratives will feel like a kindred puzzle. Each tale informs the next, much as the Primer’s episodes teach survival and ethics; the cumulative effect recalls how Stephenson’s story-within-a-story transforms from entertainment into a blueprint for living.