The Difference Engine

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For the machine thought up by Charles Babbage, see Difference engine'

**Title** **The Difference Engine**
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Alternate History, Steampunk novel
Publisher	Victor Gollancz Ltd
Released	September 1990
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	256 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-575-04762-3

The Difference Engine is an alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is a prime example, and one of the founding novels, of the steampunk sub-genre.

The novel was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1991 and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1992.

1 Plot introduction
2 Plot summary
3 External links
4 Editions

[edit] Plot introduction

The novel posits a Victorian Britain in which the Industrial Radical party, led by a longer-lived Lord Byron (because he never died in the Greek War of Independence) has won power after the changes that occurred in British society when entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer (actually his analytical engine rather than the difference engine).

Following this success, the Babbage computers become mass-produced and ubiquitous, and their use emulates the innovations which actually occurred during our information technology and Internet revolutions. The novel explores the social consequences of having such a revolution in the nineteenth century, such as the emergence of "clackers", technically proficient people skilled at programming the Engines through the use of punch-cards, such as Theophile Gautier.

In the novel, the British Empire is more powerful than it ever became in our reality thanks to the development and use of extremely advanced steam driven technology in industry; the armed forces (airships, dreadnoughts, and artillery); and the Babbage computers themselves. Britain, rather than the United States opened Japan to Western trade, in part because the United States had never coalesced into one larger nation, due in no small part to interference by a Britain which foresaw the implications of a truly United States on the world stage. The countries occupying the territory of the real United States include: the United States; the Confederate States; the Republic of Texas; the Republic of California; a Communist commune on Manhattan Island (with Karl Marx as a leading light); British North America (slightly larger than real Canada); Russian America (Alaska); and terra nullius. Additionally, all land in the Americas are colloquially referred to as America (Viz: Sybil:Do you know anything about Texas, Hetty? Hetty: A country in America. French own it, don't they?). Napoleon III's French Empire holds an entente with the British and is even married to a British woman.

Among other historical characters, the novel features "Texian" President Sam Houston, as an exile after a political coup in Texas, a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley (as a Luddite), John Keats as a kinotropist (an operator of mechanical pixelated screens), and Benjamin Disraeli as a publicist and tabloid writer.

Britain under the Industrial Radical party shows the utmost respect for leading scientific and industrial figures such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Charles Darwin. Indeed, they are very often raised to the peerage on their merits, causing a break with the past as regards social prestige and class distinctions. These new patterns are also reflected in the educational sphere; classical studies are losing importance, and are being replaced by more practical concerns (engineering, accountancy, etc). In one touching paragraph, it is mentioned that the worst effects of the Irish Potato Famine are mitigated by timely aid from "the Rads".

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The action of the story follows Sybil Gerard, a political courtesan and daughter of an executed Luddite leader (she is borrowed from Disraeli's novel Sybil); Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, a paleontologist and explorer; and Laurence Oliphant, a historical figure whose (very real) career as a travel writer is, on Gibson and Sterling's alternate Victorian world, merely a cover for espionage activities "undertaken in the service of Her Majesty". Linking all their stories is the trail of a mysterious set of reportedly very powerful computer punch cards and the individuals fighting to obtain them.

As is the case with special objects in several novels by Gibson, the punch cards are to some extent a MacGuffin.

During the story, many characters come to believe that the punch cards are a gambling "modus," a program that would, theoretically, always allow the user to place reliable bets. This is in line with Ada Lovelace's penchant for gambling (in both the novel and actuality). Only in the last chapter is it revealed that the punched cards represent a program which prove two theorems which in reality would not be discovered until 1931 by Kurt Gödel.

Defending the cards, Mallory gathers his brothers and a policeman to fight the revolutionary Captain Swing who leads a London riot during "the Stink", a major episode of pollution in which London swelters under an inversion layer (compare to the London Smog of December 1952).