The Difference Engine: Gibson, William, Sterling, Bruce: 9780553294613: Amazon.com: Books

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The Difference Engine Mass Market Paperback – January 1, 1992

by William Gibson (Author), Bruce Sterling (Contributor)

447 ratings

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1855: 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. And three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with history—and the future:

Sybil Gerard—a fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator

Edward “Leviathan” Mallory—explorer and paleontologist

Laurence Oliphant—diplomat, mystic, and spy.

Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for….

Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine is the collaborative masterpiece by two of the most acclaimed science fiction authors writing today. Provocative, compelling, intensely imagined, it is a startling extension of Gibson’s and Sterling’s unique visions—and the beginning of movement we know today as “steampunk!”

Print length

429 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Spectra
Publication date

January 1, 1992
Dimensions

4.57 x 1.2 x 6.9 inches
ISBN-10

055329461X
ISBN-13

978-0553294613
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Customer reviews

5 star		49%
4 star		22%
3 star		17%
2 star		6%
1 star		5%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Nicholas Dollak

Mystery, history, and mechanical supercomputers with hand-crafted style

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2021

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I am quite glad I read The Difference Engine now, rather than when it was first published. For one, I lacked the historical knowledge to grasp what was unusual about the alternate history presented here; for another, the original book lacked the retrospective Afterword by the authors. Time, lots of reading, and experience corrected the first problem; the Afterword included in this edition helped with the other. Had I read it in my mid-teens, I would have found it dazzling but rather incomprehensible.

That said, I highly recommend this novel to fans of Cyberpunk and Steampunk. Rich and redolent with 19th Century period detail, it is an espionage caper set in a world transformed by a single “What If?” tweak: What if Charles Babbage’s “difference engine”, a large mechanical computer that would have been capable of algebraic computation had it been completed and worked – what if it had come to fruition? The computer revolution, sans electronics, rewrites the history we know from that point onward.

I will not spoil it with plot details in this review. Armed with that knowledge (and the fact that one can now easily look up the names of various historical characters on the Internet to learn more and better appreciate the alternate history), I recommend that science-fiction fans looking for what may be arguably the first Steampunk novel delve into this, stick with it all the way to the end, and read the Afterword. Perhaps read it twice and catch what you likely missed on the first read.

(NOTE: It’s tempting to think of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as “Steampunk”, but there’s a fine distinction. They wrote of the present time or near-future affected by scientific progress beyond where it was, whereas Steampunk imagines an alternate past affected by modern tech that uses the milieu of past techniques and materials.)

6 people found this helpful

Kurt Joseph Pankau

Beats The Ever-Loving Crud Out Of Me...

Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2012

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Quintessential steampunk, The Difference Engine hits the beats of a cyberpunk story, which is not surprising, given its authors. We have references to dead pixels, load balancing, a brief stay in a dystopian nightmare, but all set in mid-19th Century London. And yet I'm walking away from this book not entirely sure what to think of it. Which is both good and bad, methinks.

I get the feeling that the book really has no idea what to think of itself, either. In the last few paragraphs we get a peak at the novel's purpose--although a vague peak, one that even its Wikipedia entry misinterprets. I don't want to go into it here for fear of spoilers, but I found the ending abrupt and unsatisfying, even if it is appropriate to the story. It just doesn't do quite enough to justify the 500 meandering pages that preceded it. When I got excited for it to resolve, it digressed. When I got to the ending and turned the page to arrive at the afterword, I was surprised to see that I'd already finished it, because I didn't really understand what it had accomplished.

Through the entire book, I found myself wondering where the story was heading, since the narrative lacked traditional structure or even a single focal character. It's a story about a MacGuffin, the characters are incidental. It's also a story about a time and place. While the narrative frustrated me, I had a lot of fun with the alternate history of steam-ified 19th Century London. I loved the jargon, the nods to real life events. I loved Benjamin Disraeli as a tabloid-writer-turned socialite (in my mind, he is basically Truman Capote). I loved the mentions of the Sepoy Rebellion or the French using mummies to fuel their engine in Egypt. But these are artifacts, Easter eggs. And they point to the central problem with this book: it doesn't stand that well on its own. It's almost TOO post-modern. If you know you're history, you'll laugh out loud while you turn the pages. If you identify with cyberpunk, you'll love seeing it transposed onto brass. But if you just want to read a good book, this will frustrate the hell out of you.

So, in the end, it's a rambling, self-important chin-scratcher with some incredibly winning scenes that will, at the very least, drop you off in the present day thinking to yourself "What the hell just happened?" It's important that books like this exist. It's not for everyone, but I'm glad I read it.

Top reviews from other countries

Debb

not as good as I hoped

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 3, 2020

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The Difference Engine (S.F. MASTERWORKS): I am disappointed with this book. Really. I nearly put it down several times. It's only because I didn't have anything else that I continued with it, but with 80 pages to go i just can't really be bothered any more.
There are a few exciting bits, there is one shockingly explicit sex scene with some rather unnecessary words which has a completely different tone to the rest of the book and once it's done it's unimportant. You spend ages reading about characters only for them to be unimportant, or dropped and never mentioned again.
I liked the scene - the imagery, the setting I guess. And the idea is great too, but the execution not so great.

In conclusion: I read most of it, and will attempt to read to the end, but I am disappointed.

4 people found this helpful

Alessandro

Life is too short.....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2019

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I feel really bad giving one star to any book in general , but I tried very hard to finish this book , I persevered until 75 % but than it was so painful I had to give up........
The storyline is very lame almost not existing, characters totally unbelievable and I couldn't get to like them.
Waste of time.

5 people found this helpful

A. J. Trickett

It's okay.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2017

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I thought this book was okay rather than great. The changing of perspective makes it a bit confusing to read, and the sheer number of characters, requires a bit of organisation to remember who is who. Ultimately there is very little story in the book, it's the setting that is the more interesting. There is also quite a bit of irrelevant narrative that adds nothing to the story, or the characters and just fills pages. It is an interesting view on alternative history, and many elements to that are plausible, but I think the story set in that alternate history could have been better.

4 people found this helpful

WillieW

Neither quite a novel nor short stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 7, 2021

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The book is made of "snapshots" of the lives of a number of characters in an alternative, imagined Victorian London. The experiments of Babbage, who designed a mechanical computer, have been successful and caused a revolution (literally figuratively, and mechanically) that is explored in an overall tale of political intrigue with International scope. I liked it but found the book somehow lacking. You could imagine it the result of research in a future time where records and stories abruptly cease or are incomplete. I believe this was the intention of the co-authors. Would recommend it, with the above health warning.

tallmanbaby

a ripping yarn

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 25, 2014

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For the most part this is an updated ripping yarn, in the style of "The Man who was Thursday" by GK Chesterton. It is framed with some other material, in the usual steampunk manner of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

It is vastly longer than it needs to be, the plot is not the tightest, I do rather wonder if the joint authors just wrote alternate chapters. However if you want to luxuriate in this cod-Victorian style of adventure, then it is well thought out, intelligent stuff.

2 people found this helpful

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