The Difference Engine

Rating:
Summary: Despite the richness of detail, the novel drags.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Sci-Fi for Yesteryear
Review: Brought to you by two of the great cyber-punk authors, Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, is a look at the past and how it might have been. Take a story with hackers pushing the world to chaos in an attempt to keep machines from running everything, but then, take the same story and go back into the 1800s before computers.

To fully understand what these two have done, you need to be fairly knowledgeable of the luminaries of that era; some of these luminaries include Byron, Sam Houston, Edward Mallory, Laurence Oliphant, John Keats, and Charles Babbage (to name a few). Rather than just throw a poet into the role of Prime Minister, they chose a poet who actually was in Parliament. All their choices are very well thought out; they did their research. It reminds me of Orson Scott Cards tweaking of American history and legend in the Alvin Maker series.

The computers have been replaced by punch cards. The elements are the same though, such as the authorities have a punch card of everyone with all of his or her information, and meeting the right people can erase your identity.

I would recommend reading this book if you are familiar with the Romantic and Victorian eras.

Rating:
Summary: The genesis of steam punk?
Review: I acquired a copy of this book almost immediately after it was published, partly because I'm an avid fan of alternate histories and partly because I was an acquaintance of Bruce Sterling, one of the cofounders of cyberpunk. That is, I knew him to talk to because he was an Austinite and always came to ArmadilloCon, and he sort of knew who I was (though he made no pretense of remembering my name each year). He was pleased to sign my copy -- and changed the copyright date on the title page to 1855!

And why do I especially like this book? It's the first instance I remember of what soon came to be known as "steam-punk." A technology-based yarn, but with Victorian techno, not computers. Not exactly. There are three principal characters here: Sybil Gerard, daughter of Walter Gerard, the great Luddite agitator and orator; Dr. Edward Mallory, dinosaur-hunter, afficionado of steam-gurneys, and stalwart of the Industrial Radical Party; and Laurence Oliphant, who pretends to be only a somewhat adventuresome journalist-cum-diplomat but who is actually a top intelligence operative and handler for Her Majesty's government. And then there's Inspector Fraser, part of the very Special Branch, as well as a number of nicely realized supporting characters.

But, of course, the story is really about the world of 1855 in which Charles Babbage was very successful in developing his mechanical computer, a marvelous Engine (always capitalized here) of wheels and rods and gears and punch cards that has put Britain well on top of things, and the government in many ways well on top of its citizens. The plot device that gets things going is the theft of a box of punched Engine cards, the purpose of which is never quite divulged -- though we know the program they contain is Important. It's all a great deal of fun in the Idea-as-Hero tradition. Gibson and Sterling (mostly the latter, I think) have definitely got the feel of the times and the city of London, immersing the reader in authentic jargon and cant, but without casting you adrift.

Frankly, I don't understand the antipathy of the other reviewers. It's a pretty good story and most people I know personally, even those who aren't big Gibson fans, liked it. In fact, my only real complaint is in an area where Gibson's hand definitely shows, and that's the ending of the book. Actually, it doesn't really end; it just stops, and with a bit of Gibsonian mysticism regarding the set of cards thrown in.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I am a fan of William Gibson, I read a lot of good book written by him and find that he is a very interesting author.

I originally bought that book a long time ago, then I lent it to a friend, before reading it. I had forgotten who I lent the book to, but I remembered having purchased it it the past.

A few years later, I gave up on finding the book and bought it once again, being intrigued about the premise of a high tech in the not so distant past and all that.

While I read it, I did not find that the storyline adequately answered my expectations. It reminded me of the sort of thing I use to watch in a cheap 30 minutes animated character television program when I was a kid.

I was bored, I did not like it. Maybe its just my science fiction side that was screaming for the alternate universe where computers (even based on steam engine) appeared about 100 years ago that was disapointed. Can't argue against the characters, the rest of the storyline fits well on its own, it just does not appeal to me.

Rating:
Summary: nice plan, but huh?
Review: i really like reading gibson. usually, it's kind of like running a marathon: it's harder than hell to get to the end, but ultimately rewarding. this one was both an easier read than i expect gibson to be (of course, he had help writing this one) and not as rewarding in the end.

set in victorian england, 'the difference engine' is an alternate history: what would have been changed had charles babbage's mechanical computer been a practical reality? i VERY STRONGLY reccomend that the person interested in reading this book do some research on the times and concepts before starting this book. you will get a lot more out of it if you know what's going on before you start. this is probably one of the worst failings of the book: while the background is richly detailed (there is a wealth of victorian slang, social moires, and lifestyle), the basic concept of what the hell a difference engine even is is never explained.

the story is apparently about a mysterious series of computer punch cards falling into the hands of a series of characters. the characters have only loose connections with each other, and once the story moves on to the next character, the plot threads are left dangling open for the previous one. just what exactly the punch cards do is never revealed, so the ending of the book feels rather anti-climactic.

the concepts and ideas are interesting, but basically the tale never goes anywhere. you keep reading, hoping that there is a point to be made, but the whole thing just kind of fizzles out. "steampunk" is a fun and original idea, it just doesn't completely work here.

Rating:
Summary: Meat, not gruel
Review: I'm puzzled by the complaint (made by several reviewers below) that the plot threads are never tied up (yes they are, in the final third of the novel) and that we never find out what the mysterious punch cards do (we most certainly do -- see pp. 387, 421, and 429, where we're told EXACTLY what their function is).

This is admittedly a novel that has to be read carefully; one can't just slurp it down like jello without doing any work. It's a serious novel, thank goodness -- not "light entertainment."

I'm also puzzled that nobody seems to have noticed what a highly *political* novel this is. This book is much more about political and cultural ideology than it is about alternative-history technology.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable Complex Reading
Review: In contrast to most of the negative reviews, I thought the suprise ending was powerful and not entirely unexpected.Though this book is science fiction, its way of leading up to the suprise ending is similar to the stratigy used in the movie "Sixth Sense." Both start out slow,yet lead to powerfull endings which are foreshadowed with tantilizing clues.This last means that both stories should be seen more than once in order to be better understood.The Difference Engine is, thus, a complex story that requires an open mind and multiple readings in order to enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Huh?
Review: Okay, right now I'm on a cyberpunk kick and I picked this book up at the library because the premise sounded interesting: what if the computer ("Engine" in the book lingo) had been invented in the nineteenth century? And what if the government of England had been taken over by and Industrial Radical party that essentially made the industrial revolution more so?

Well, after reading the book I still don't feel like I had any answer to those questions. In fact, I don't really feel like this book had any cohesion at all. Essentially what we have here is three novellas, each with a different central character. But other than a mysterious box of punch cards which each of them at one time or another possesses, there isn't any throughline. There are tantalising bits of plot here and there, but none of it seems to go anywhere or make any sense. And the box of cards has no impact; everyone's out to get it, but why? Who knows what it does? Why should we care?

Characters appear and disappear with infuriating randomness -- just when you think something's going to happen, Oops! that's the end of that bit and no we're somewhere else. Conspiracies are hinted at but then they just vanish or become unimportant with no explanation. I kept waiting for all the threads to come together and knock me over the head with significance, but that never happened.

Some of the alternate reality stuff was interesting, but there just wasn't enough backstory to make it relevant. All in all, the book left me with the feeling of "What the heck was that about?" If the writers knew, I wish they had seen fit to share.

Rating:
Summary: A complex alternate history
Review: The Difference Engine reflects the creative synergy of two great cyberpunk pioneers, Gibson and Sterling. It is a difficult and complex novel, based on the premise that Charles Babbage's eponymous mechanical computer is actually developed for practical use using steam power in the Victorian Age, ushering in the Information Revolution a century early. The authors manage to convincingly evoke a Victorian otherworld that is both hauntingly familiar and yet dramatically different from our own past. England is ruled by technocrats and scientists (known as savants) who battle Luddite terrorists; the United States are far from united, rent between the Republic of Texas, the Confederate South, and the Marxist Manhattan Commune. Gibson and Sterling utilize this fascinating background to great advantage, using a colorful cast of characters (including famous historic figures like Sam Houston and Lord Byron in roles a little different from those in our own history books) to explore such weighty themes as evolution and natural selection; technology, surveillance and social control; AI; and the science of chaos and complexity.

I'm sure I did not fully grasp all the implications or understand all the intricate plotlines in this rare treasure; it will definitely repay rereading. But I'm sure that thoughtful fans of Gibson and Sterling--especially those with some knowledge of 19th century England--will enjoy this book as much as I did. It may well be regarded as an SF masterpiece with time. On the other hand, readers who require straightforward, linear plotting and who find ambiguity irritating will certainly do best to skip this novel.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but distorts history
Review: The idea of the invention of Steampowered computers in the nineteenth century is interesting but the author makes several unetanable claims of what would happen in the new timeline. The book says that the Mexican American War never happened and Texas is still independent. Yet the American Civil War happened even sooner than in our timeline and the South won. One of the causes of the Civil War was the dispute over whether the newly won territories captured in the war with Mexico would be free or slave states. If the war with Mexico never happens it stands to reason that the Civil War would be delayed or prevented all together. In the book Karl Marx is claimed to have seized control of New York City during the Draft riots during the Civil War and one of his followers is presented as a supporter of slavery. In the real history though Karl Marx supported the Union war effort and opposed slavery.