Neal Stephenson, A-1 writer.

Let me say up front that I think Neal Stephenson is an A-1 writer. Smart man who knows how to string together an exciting plot with plenty of thinkfood along the way. He also really likes Chinese history.

So I'm half-excited at the news that George Clooney is set to produce a Diamond Age miniseries.

You know, that Good Night and Good Luck movie Clooney did wasn't half bad. And the novel Diamond Age has some bits in it that would translate really well to the screen.

It's a science fiction story about a world where national governments have been replaced by "phyles," or groups who kind of glom up bits of old cultures they identify with. The main characters in this are Victorians (emulating/adapting the culture of Victorian England) and Confucians (emulating/adapting the culture of imperial China). Because these are cultures that value education and social organization, they do well in the rough-and-tumble world that Stephenson sees coming about thanks to advances in nanotechnology -- dust that can create objects, pre-programmed virus factories, surveillance machines that can never be detected or stopped.....

OK, so that's a fun world to play around in. It's a great story, too, sort of a Dickensian thing where this upper class designer invents this Book -- an intelligent computerized virtual world, really -- to help develop his young daughter into a creative and mathematical genius. Through a series of events, the Book winds up in the hands of a street kid from an English-speaking enclave in future Shanghai. So, think Blade Runner meets Oliver Twist meets Once Upon A Time in China, and you get the general idea.

The only thing that really bugs me is there's going to be an image near the end that will be visually sumptuous and brilliant and will consist of






SPOILERS -- READ NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT A BIT OF THE ENDING REVEALED






a vast army of fanatically loyal Chinese girls rallying under the banner of our slightly older whitey white Victorian heroine. Literally, I mean. Rank after rank of them, recruited from orphanages (!!!) and trained using Books pirated (!!!) from the original Book.

So that's something to, uh, watch for.