The Difference Engine

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: This book takes a little while to get started (about 30 pages--not too long), but once it does, wow. What a world! The alternative Victorian England they've created, in which gigantic steam-powered mechanical computers are used by the government in an attempt to control people's lives, is such a thrill to "visit" that I dearly wish they would write another few books in the series. The characters are unusually well drawn, for sci-fi, and the antiquated style of much of the writing and dialogue is lots of fun. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but many missed opportunities
Review: This isn't a bad novel, and I don't think it "drags" as some would have it--there is enough motive force behind the novel (action, plot development) to keep you there, BUT

The main character just isn't particularly interesting and the novel fails to flesh out its alternative history in a way that would make it truly intersting. We get a smattering of the catastrophist/gradualist controversy (derived from SJ Gould is my guess), and Victorian social attitudes and mores get depicted (but not discussed) pretty well.

However, we don't get very much on the difference engines or how the technology interacts with Victorian society or on why Byron would have made a successful prime minister in these circumstances or . . .

Well, we could go on at length as to topics the two novelists might have turned their attention to.

But at the end of the day, not a bad way to spend a few days away from more serious reading.

Rating:
Summary: A tour-de-force of Victorian alternate history. 4+stars
Review: ______________________________________________
The Difference Engine explores a world in which Charles Babbage
built a practical mechanical computer in the mid-19th century.
Britain is thus going through both the Industrial and Information
Revolutions simultaneously. The book combines Sterling's
wildman inventiveness with Gibson's brooding, streetwise
characters, both shoved back one and a half centuries into an
obsessively-detailed and weirdly-transmogrified London of 1855.

Gibson & Sterling explore such topics as dinosaur physiology,
Catastrophism vs. Uniformitarian geology, chaos theory, Victorian
sexual practices, the Red Manhattan commune, treachery & graft in
the Republic of Texas, British Imperial realpolitik, pre-industrial
Japanese robotics, and mechanical-video technology. "Splendidly
extraordinary.... It is stimulating to have one's intelligence
overestimated by such brilliant writers." -- the Times of London.

The Difference Engine is less a novel than a series of interconnected
stories & vignettes -- a combination that worked well for me, but has
irritated others . The book reads more like "real"
history than fiction -- loose ends abound, mysteries are unresolved,
and characters disappear, just as in real life. If you like tidy, linear,
tightly-plotted novels, The Difference Engine may not be for you.
But --

Those willing to grant two master writers a large dollop of poetic
license will enjoy the hauntingly strange landscape, filled with
steam-propelled cars, 19th-century credit cards, and "clackers" -- the
computer hackers of the day ... [The] depth of imagining is
magnificent ... it's an immersion in a fascinating, wholly realized
milieu.

-- from Robert J. Sawyer's review (Google), which is the only one I found on
the net that I can recommend ( CAUTION: SPOILERS ).

lmost every character in the book was a real person, or is borrowed
from a period novel (by Disraeli, himself a character, a nice self-
referential touch). The depth of research into Victoriana is awesome
and a bit daunting. Fortunately, the estimable Eileen Gunn ("Stable
Strategies for Middle Management") has provided the "Difference
Dictionary" [Google sff.net], an essential
and spoiler-free reference, which you should have at hand when
reading the book (it was included in the Japanese edition).

In a "real" alternate world, I'm not sure if history would have been
greatly affected had Babbage succeeded -- his machine would have
been thousands of times slower than even the first vacuum-tube
computers (which were themselves cumbersome beasts -- ENIAC
(1946) weighed 30 tons). And marginally-reliable at best -- Babbage
failed partly because his Difference Engine required technology
beyond the capabilities of the time. In any case, the mid-nineteenth
century may not have been ripe for an Information Revolution --
maybe it wasn't yet "steam-engine time"? But I haven't done the
research that Sterling & Gibson did -- Sterling in particular is an
expert on 19th-century technology -- and their premise is certainly
plausible enough for fiction. And the story is more than strong
enough to overcome such niggling.

I read The Difference Engine when it was first published, liked it,
and just finished rereading it, with at least as much pleasure as on
first reading. It's an oddly compelling book -- clearly not to
everyone's taste, but The Difference Engine suited, and entertained
me. I hope I've conveyed enough of the flavor (and problems) of the
book for you to judge whether or not to give it a go.

Review copyright 1999 by Peter D. Tillman
Google infinityplus.co.uk for original review, with links.