Decades into our future, near the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken a strict moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, and then stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer's purpose is to educate and raise a girl who is capable of thinking for herself. It performs its functions superbly. Unfortunately, the book has fallen into the wrong hands. Now Hackworth must begin an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo Victorian paradise, he seeks out the elusive figure known as the Alchemist. His quest ultimately leads him to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer -- a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to reprogram the future of humanity.
- ISBN10 1586211129
- ISBN13 9781586211127
- Publish Date 1 August 2001
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 2 July 2021
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Little, Brown & Company
- Imprint Little, Brown and Company
- Edition Abridged edition
- Format Audiobook
- Duration 6 hours
- Language English