The Difference Engine (Spectra special editions) (Mass Market Paperback)

by William Gibson (Author), Bruce Sterling (Contributor) "COMPOSITE IMAGE, OPTICALLY encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, October 14, 1905..." (more)
Key Phrases: Lady Ada, Royal Society, Edward Mallory (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
A collaborative novel from the premier cyberpunk authors, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine takes us not forward but back, to an imagined 1885: the Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven, cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time.

From Publishers Weekly
In a surprising departure from the traditional view of cyberpunk's bleak future, Gibson ( Mona Lisa Overdrive ) and Sterling ( Islands in the Net ) render with elan and colorful detail a scientifically advanced London, circa 1855, where computers ("Engines") have been developed. Fierce summer heat and pollution have driven out the ruling class, and ensuing anarchy allows the subversive, technology-hating Luddites to surface and battle the intellectual elite. Much of the problem centers on a set of perforated cards, once in the possession of an executed Luddite leader's daughter, later in the hands of "Queen of Engines" Ada Byron (daughter of prime minister Lord Byron), finally given to Edward Mallory, a scientist. Mallory, who knows the cards are a gambling device that can be read with a specialized Engine, is soon threatened and libeled by the Luddites, and he and his associates confront the scoundrels in a violent showdown. A sometimes listless pace and limp conclusions that defy the plot's complexity flaw an otherwise visionary, handsomely written, unsentimental tale that convincingly revises the 19th-century Western world. 75,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Spectra (January 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055329461X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553294613
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (104 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #50,989 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Loathing....unadulturated loathing... ....I loathe it all!, July 15, 2006

By	SpeedyReader - See all my reviews

Recipe for an excellent book:
1 Very excellent author, whose grocery lists are probably high art.
1 Passing fair author who is clearly a devotee of the above.
1 excellent idea
1 scathing view of modern politics and the direction of culture
8 or more well developed characters

In a perfect world, you place these things in a blender and out pops a perfect book (Deus Irae by Dick and Zelanzny, for example.) In the chaotic universe, however, sometimes the ingredients just aren't enough.

In well-over twenty years of reading science fiction, spec and alternative history there, literally, has never been a book I found more appealing (before reading) than The Difference Engine. Co-authored by my favorite living author, firmly based in my own political views, discussing a time frame and technologies I enjoy reading about, I had every expectation of a read that would be enjoyable.

I am a forgiving reader who can be caught up in the art not the story, if the story fails (and this one does). Turn a phrase prettily and I will forgive a lack of plot in a heartbeat. Have a stirring plot and sanitized seventh-grade English and I will plow through just to see how it ends, even if I loathe your style. Have a plot that is one-dimensional, and writing that is more so, and I will freely admit to a deep hatred of your work (ahem. Mercedes Lackey, Orson Scott Card, ahem...) but I will *still* give you a chance on occasion (and hate myself for doing it.)

When I read The Difference Engine, I tried to imagine everything other than the book itself that would inspire such loathing in me. Did I have PMS? Did I not get it? Was I under stress? Sick? Unhappy at something else and projecting it onto this book?

I read it again. I have heard of people not getting Neuromancer and hating it, and figured maybe even though that concept was alien to me, I would get it if I read it again...

So I did. I read the characters with the flat affect of a dozen schizophrenics on Haldol and Thorazine and went "why are these characters this way? Is it part of the story? (No, just terrible writing.) I re-read the sex scene that went on for a couple of dozen pages with all the eroticism of a minimalist story about defecation and all the appeal of a 1950s VD movie flickering on an old 35mm projector. Ick! I read the fascinating plot and the fascinating world and realized I found it as interesting as belly button lint.... No, that's not appropriate. At least belly button lint you can wonder about!

The Difference Engine vacillates between a tour guide to a completely uninteresting alternate reality, sweaty soft-core porn that has the sex appeal of syphilis and the inner workings of characters that are, themselves, nothing but punch-cards in a world of PCs. They don't work, they don't tell you anything, and we just don't have the capacity to get much use out of them in our world.

I expect, someday in the future, we'll find out that the book was ten times longer and some terrible editor butchered it, and that's why it was so very sucktacular. At that time, I will go back to my previous view of Gibson as an author with the Midas touch.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Despite the richness of detail, the novel drags., December 5, 1997

By A Customer

An enviable array of critical raves lines the first few pages of The Difference Engine, including this one from director Ridley Scott: "A visionary steam-powered heavy metal fantasy! Gibson and Sterling create a high Victorian virtual reality of extraordinary richness and detail."

In this novel Gibson teams up with Bruce Sterling, a brilliant sci-fi writer himself, to provide an amazing picture of Victorian England. Both writers are notable for their attention to detail, and their combined effort teems with thousands of minutiae from the period, not to mention large themes based on the Victorian preoccupation with such things as science, technology, exploration, and steam.

The novel belongs to a particular genre of science fiction called alternate history, where the writer answers the question, if such-and-such had happened (or never happened), what would the world be like now? The Difference Engine tries to imagine what the world would be like if the computer had been invented 100 years earlier. It is set in England in 1855. Sci-fi pundits have dubbed the novel "steampunk" because those who control the steam-driven computers control society.

The structure of the novel falls into three discreet, self-contained units all concerned with a case full of rare and valuable computer cards. In the first part, Sybil Gerard, a fallen woman, inherits the cards from her boyfriend, who was murdered for them. In the long middle section Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, a scientist famous for his discovery of the Brontosaurus, takes charge of them next. And in the conclusion Lawrence Oliphant, a gentleman detective with advanced syphillis, finally solves the mystery of their whereabouts.

Alternate history writers love to recast famous figures in altered roles. The writers have done just that with, for example, three of England's greatest romantic poets. Lord Byron has become prime minister, and Disraeli (the prime minister of the history books) a hack writer. Shelly is some sort of anarchist rebel and Keats has become a kinotropist, a specialist in a sort of gas-illuminated light show of computer designed images. Keats, also, seems to be the only one who knows what the cards signify.

Just to show how far the villains will go to get the computer cards and the power the cards represent, they devise a way to break down all of London's eco system as the city grinds to a halt and falls prey to looters, many of whom join the villains' rebellion: "The gloom of the day was truly extraordinary. It was scarcely noon, but the dome of St. Paul's was shrouded in filthy mist. Great rolling wads of oily fog hid the spires and the giant bannered adverts of Ludgate Hill. Fleet Street was a high-piled clattering chaos, all whip-cracking, steam-snorting, shouting. The women on the pavements crouched under soot-stained parasols and walked half-bent, and men and women alike clutched kerchiefs to their eyes and noses. Men and boys lugged family carpetbags and rubber-handled traveling-cases, their cheery straw boaters already speckled with detritus. A crowded excursion train chugged past on the spidery elevated track of the London, Chatham & Dover, its cloud of cindered exhaust hanging in the sullen air like a banner of filth."

Despite the raves from critics and all the wonderful detail, the novel sometimes dragged for me. As a lover of Victorian England (my graduate specialization), I perhaps should have liked it more, but I found the villain and some of the main characters, including Mallory, uninteresting. I wasn't convinced that things were much different in Gibson's and Sterlings's reality even with the addition of the computer, a noisy, mechanical, affair. The characters might as well have been fighting over an Egyptian mummy for all the difference the computer made. And the long center section with the inevitable Gibson pitched battle (I'm betting my money that Gibson wrote the middle part and Sterling wrote the bookends) didn't thrill me.

Lawrence Oliphant's genteel manners and shrewd detective work make him a fascinating character. The novel might have been more satisfying if he'd been the hero all the way through instead of just the last 100 pages. The experimental conclusion with various bits and pieces from personal journals, letters, advertisements, recordings, and popular songs attempts to tie everything up. But one never has the sense that the cards nor the computers were as important as the writers want us to believe. Did the cards really contain just a mathematical gambling system, as everyone seemed to think, or were they something more ominous and earthshaking? Keats comments that they were far more important than anyone would ever know but doesn't say why. They simply are never satisfactorily explained.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More an essay than a novel, July 30, 2000

By	Lee Gaiteri (Syracuse, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What do I like about the Difference Engine? It's absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what the world of the Victorian era would have been like had mechanical computers been perfected in the early 1800s. The detail of the world is wonderful, from the kinescopes (similar to movie or slide projectors) to the pollution, the politics and the stark differences between our own history and what might have been.

What don't I like? Well, there isn't much of a plot. The most involved plot occurs where the book follows Mallory, and through those portions the book is somewhat enjoyable, but it never really gets to the meat. Why are these boxes of punch cards so important? Who wants them and why? What happened to the other elements of the story that got left behind?

The book gets lost along the way, and never really fully recovers. The end comes almost abruptly, just a few incidents that are supposed to wrap things up, but don't. At the very end, absolutely nothing makes sense, and I even reread the end several times to be sure of that; it reminds me a lot of when I watched the end of 2001 (the movie) for the first time, and didn't understand that either--and yet this was worse, for somehow I got the feeling that I was supposed to know what was happening and yet key pieces of the puzzle had been overlooked by the authors. (I suspect this was more Sterling's doing than Gibson's.)

As a curiosity, a look at what might have been, this book merits some attention. As a novel, it's just not so hot, though it has its moments.