Did you read Neuromancer and say, "This was good, but it could have used more steampunk?" That's kind of how one might describe The Difference Engine: Neuromancer meets steampunk. It's not a comprehensive, completely accurate description, but if that's sufficient for you, you can stop reading now and go read the book.Still here? Cool.William Gibson is on my "I must read everything by him!" shelf, and his influence on literature, particularly science fiction and subgenres like cyberpunk and steampunk, is unquestionable. One might even go so far as to point out how words he coined or popularized, such as cyberspace, have made their way into colloquial parlance. On top that, he's more than just a great writer; he's a good writer, with stories to accompany all those big ideas. Nevertheless, I gave four stars to Neuromancer, and now I'm giving two stars to The Difference Engine. What's wrong with me?(Although this is a collaboration with Bruce Sterling, I haven't read anything by Sterling yet—he is on the list. So I'll be focusing on how this book affects my impression of William Gibson.)There's nothing wrong with me! I'm perfect! It's all Gibson's fault. He has this amazing ability to defy my expectations; I never know what I'm going to get from a Gibson story. Despite my best guesses and suppositions, both Neuromancer and The Difference Engine surprised me, and by the end I realized that Gibson had somehow snuck away while I was reading and come back with an extra portion of crazy ideas and subtext to stuff into the last act. So as much as I enjoy and recognize Gibson's skill, I always tend to put down his books dazed and a little bewildered. Sometimes books like that still manage to earn five stars, but very often they receive only four: they left me with respect and a sense of awe, but they did not make me love them.I don't really want to discuss The Difference Engine as a steampunk novel. Of course, I am aware of its significance to the genre, and the reasons behind that significance are obvious when one reads the book. Gibson and Sterling have essentially laid the ground for the steampunk premise, if you will, of how all the clockwork revolution could take place. Babbage actually manages to complete his analytical engine, which is notable because it is the first design of a computing machine that is Turing complete. This is a big deal, and as with most high-level computer science can get complex rather fast, but here's the gist: if something is Turing complete, then it can in theory be used to solve any computational problem whatsoever. (In practice there are pesky limitations like, say, time.) So Babbage triggers the computing revolution a century early, and Gibson and Sterling doggedly develop the ramifications of this revolution to its logical extremes. Babbage's engines are aggressively analog, not at all the slick and fast electronic and digital devices to which we are accustomed. They are massive and require yards or miles of gears and tape and, yes, punch cards. So time on engines is a precious commodity, and the use of engines brings with it all sorts of logistical problems, such as cleaning and maintenance. Steampunk triggers an irrational sense of ambivalence in me, partly because it always seems to be so garish and flashy: it's got all this cool technology reimagined as neo-Victorian, clockwork gadgets made from gears and pulleys, and it just seems to offend my sense of plausibility. Which is just silly, when you think about it, because I'm willing to read books featuring hyperspace and wormholes and humanoid aliens, so I shouldn't have a problem with steampunk. But we all have our biases, I guess.But I digress.So regardless of its steampunk street cred, The Difference Engine is a great piece of alternate history. Gibson and Sterling drop hints at what an alt-Victorian London equipped with Babbage engines could be like, from automated advertising on the side of a building to the surveillance-state-like use of citizen ID numbers. And yes, there are airships (warning: TVTropes). Not only is "Lord Babbage" in a position of considerable influence, but Byron is Prime Minister, and he lives long enough to see his daughter Ada grow up to become an influential mathematician. Darwin gets a title too, and in general The Difference Engine is a thought experiment that speculates what would have happened if a more progressive generation of "rad[ical] lords" had inherited the government from Lord Wellington's Tories.Britain's role in the history of science is fascinating, and the nineteenth century particularly so. The scientific community was even more of an Old Boys' club than it is now, and so all the various great scientific minds knew each other (or at least knew of each other) through the various Royal Societies. They socialized, stole ideas, had public spats, and generally make that period of the history of science look like some kind of MuchMusic drama. This is great for science writers, because it makes for an entertaining way to tell the history of science, and I love reading accounts like this. Gibson and Sterling embrace this same dramatic flair and make the rivalries and alliances among the nineteenth-century men of science one of the central pillars of the story.All of this should make for an amazing story. Alas, The Difference Engine falls short of being awesome, and that's particularly fatal when two big names are attached to it. The novel as a whole lacks coherence and unity in its structure and in the narration. Gibson and Sterling connect the lives of three protagonists, but they don't seem in any particular hurry to develop the plot, and the mystery that gets dangled in front of us at the beginning of the book receives a hasty, even token resolution at the very end. As an egregious example of this incoherent style, just consider the first chapter (or "iteration"), which features Sybil Gerard as the protagonist. Sybil is the daughter of a prominent Luddite leader, and since her father's death she has fallen on hard times and become a high-class prostitute. But then she meets up with Mick Radley, secretary to the exiled Texian president Sam Houston. Radley promises her the world if she'll travel with him and become his apprentice, and Sybil, intrigued, agrees.For the first iteration, Sybil is a compelling protagonist. She's literate and educated and not very naive, but at the same time she is new to the experiences Radley offers (up to and including some acting and theft!). Through her, Gibson and Sterling ease us into their alternate Victorian London. Her vocabulary is memorable but not a distraction from the prose itself. Most importantly, despite her former associations with the Luddites, opposed the sexy technology that has seduced me, I found myself wanting her to succeed. She seemed like a good person, or at least a worthy person. So I was disappointed when, after the end of the first iteration, Sybil gets sidelined for the rest of the book. She returns near the end in a much-reduced role, but she never again takes centre stage to tell her story. The majority of the book falls on the shoulders of Edward Mallory, a paleontologist recently returned from the discovery of brontosaurus in Wisconsin. Mallory is all right as far as characters go, but he's no Sybil, and neither is the third protagonist, Laurence Oliphant. Just as I felt I was getting comfortable with Mallory, Gibson and Sterling switched the focus of the narrative again.It's much the same for the plot concerning the mysterious Napoleon-gauge punch cards. These first fall into Sybil's possession, and then somehow Ada Byron acquires them, and then they fall into Mallory's hands for safe-keeping. Their purpose is eventually explained, and it's all very clever, but the plot never develops into the mystery I was imagining when I began the book. Instead, the punch cards lurk in the background while Mallory bumbles through a London on the verge of erupting into class warfare. Which is fine, except that I often lost track of what was happening during this time. (To be fair, I read that part while at my nephew's second birthday party, and I had to devote some attention to keeping an eye out for incoming Awkward Social Encounters.)And then there is the coda, which is brief and very vague. It gives us a glimpse of the future and seems to imply a grim outcome that is consistent with Gibson's skies tuned to a dead TV channel. It's an awesome vision, one that I wish he and Sterling had elaborated upon—but that's the problem. In its present form, it is more non sequitur than anything else. It's a tease without any real substance, and while it fits nicely with the world that Gibson and Sterling have created in The Difference Engine, it does nothing to improve the book as a whole.I think it is OK for books to be cryptic, for books to end with cryptic epilogues, and for books to puzzle the reader. I can accept not grokking a book, if it's clear the author has done this to challenge me and force me to think about it. And I'm sure there are some people who feel this way about The Difference Engine, that it scattered narration and perplexing plot are what elevate it above newer steampunk works. For me, though, once you strip away the parts that don't work, the elements of this book that seem superfluous or faulty, there is very little left that I can enjoy. There is an alternate Victorian London built upon a very nifty premise; there are secondary characters and allusions to historical figures that tickle the scientist within me. And while I have my misgivings about the story, I really did enjoy the tone and diction, both of which really helped immerse me in the world. Mostly, though, The Difference Engine left me with too many regrets.
My Shakespeare professor was ravishing: clever and ebullient, and never to be found without knee-high leather heels. I drew playbill covers while she lectured, and gave them to her at the end of class. One day I went to her office hours and there they were, all arrayed upon the wall above her desk. Life is the better for beautiful, passionate people.One day, at the end of class, she beckoned me over: "Are you going to turn your next paper in on time?"Of course, I answered, non-chalant, with a crooked smile--why wouldn't I?"Because you turned the last four in late."Crestfallen, I merely nodded, the chastened acolyte, vowing that I would do better, next time.It was my habit to sit in my little apartment, a few blocks off campus, late into the hours of the night, not writing papers. I watched old BBC series, worked on my own little projects, and visited this site, to read about Victorian London.There I discovered Henry Mayhew, founder of the era's most successful and brilliant satirical publication, Punch, who spent his free time wandering the slums and carefully cataloging the lives of the poor. While considered an eccentric waste of time by his peers, his London Labour and the London Poor is a groundbreaking work of social research, and filled with the most fascinating and unbelievable details of life, some horrible to tell, others uproarious, and all the sort of thing which make any aspiring writer throw up his hands and cry out "imagination is a fool's crutch, which never could pretend to depict the world half so rich or unusual as it truly is!"I delighted likewise to read of Isambard Kingdom Brunel--and not merely for his fantastic name--but because he contrived to build a shipping tunnel beneath the Thames in 1825--and succeeded. Then there are the innumerable pieces of erotic fiction that flourished in the upright, proper age, an amusing reminder that there is no new act or desire under the sun, as plentifully evidenced by curious work of one mysterious 'Walter', a man of the upper middle class who wrote an extensive, rather unflattering memoir of his own sexual escapades, My Secret Life, which is at turns amusing, disturbing, unbelievable, and often, altogether too human.I can still remember the night when, up late with a paper to write, I stumbled across a growing subculture in California, 'Steampunk', whose devotees dress themselves in top hats, cutaway coats, and other such fine style, drinking Absinthe, and hearkening back to that sophisticated age. My interest was piqued.I traced the movement back to this book and picked up a copy, used. Of course, I already knew Gibson and Sterling as the innovators of the Cyberpunk subgenre, so I was excited to start. A half-chapter in, I decided I should probably know more about the Victorian before I tried this book again, and so it sat on my shelf for long years. It isn't that the story cannot be enjoyed simply as an adventure, but without prior knowledge I worried I'd miss the subtext.I looked more into Steampunk and found that its adherents didn't know much about Brunel, Mayhew, Walter, Ada Lovelace, or Disraeli--let alone more obscure figures. They knew Byron, Keats, Shelley, maybe Blake. They were mostly music scene kids with money who wanted to show off, though even their knowledge of the fashions tended to be sadly spotty and incoherent.So it's curious that this book, one of the starting-places of the movement is so obsessed with precise knowledge and references to the period. It is not a reconstruction--it presents an alternate history, so all the characters we see are different than we would expect them. It's amusing to watch these familiar personalities in unfamiliar, yet fitting roles.Likewise we have a mix of periods clashing together, since the whole concept is that Babbage's Difference Engine, the first computer, was actually built when he designed it, and not a century later. It's always a curious question to ponder: what if Archimedes early explorations into Calculus had been widely known instead of lost for millenia? What if the Greeks had realized the steam dynamo could be more than a toy?Playing with these ideas can provide a lot of fodder for writers, looking to the past in the same way Welles and Verne looked to the future. Many of the most amusing moments in The Difference Engine are throwaway references, such as Ada Lovelace asking if there might be some future in 'the notion of electrical power', hinting at the fact that electric power progressed from theory to practice quickly in the real world, while the computer languished, but it need not have been so.But as I said, the central story is not overly concerned with in-depth knowledge: terms and references are thrown around constantly, but none are required in order to comprehend what's going on. The MacGuffin is a MacGuffin--more interesting if we understand why, but hardly necessary for the plot.The structure of the story is unusual, and often, the book feels more like an intellectual exercise between the writers than a streamlined story. There is a commitment to verisimilitude, realism, and historicity throughout, so that things are never tied up neatly; there is no single, easy end, and we get three related stories which, as a whole, tell a larger story, but there is guesswork in the gaps between them.We even get a short section of 'related documents'--newspaper stories, letters, speeches, and such things which many Victorian writers (prominently Stoker) used to spice up their works and play with the narrative voice. It's a useful structure for authors, since it allows them to dole out information in pieces without suggesting an absentmindedly omniscient narrator.Yet it is certainly possible to carry verisimilitude too far in the name of realism. A story which painstakingly described every detail and moment, went off on digressions about every tertiary character or bit of fluff about the world, used realistically fragmented, stuttering dialogue, and killed off or abandoned characters at a moment's notice, all without a thought for how it would effect the structure or the story, would be very unpleasant and rather pointless reading.So we must ask: where to draw the line? When does detail and allusion simply bog down the story? When do sudden character exits make the story incomplete? It's hard to find a rule of thumb, but we can say that any piece of information the audience likely already understands need not be made explicit, any detail which does not build mood, character, or plot can be safely left out, and a character should get some kind of complete personal arc before being unceremoniously dumped.And in those regards, this book almost entirely succeeds. Each individual story doesn't quite stand on its own, and together, they do not elevate the book--there are too many spaces left unfilled--but they do coalesce into something more-or-less solid, something which we have experienced fully, and can walk away from having had our character arcs, and a very complete world.The writing is also mature and carefully-considered. We can see the authors making numerous deliberate choices about what their world is, who their characters are, and who they aren't. There are, as expected, some sparking moments of hot, flash prose (probably Gibson's) which illuminate moments here and there, as well as the overwhelming press of humanity: the characters are all tactile, all pained, all reaching for release.Of particular effect is a lone erotic scene, hearkening to illicit publications like The Pearl and to Walter's unpretentious confessional. It is not pornographic, though it is undeniably of the flesh. When it lingers, it does not do so to titillate with some overblown poetic ideal, but to send us back down to earth, to some awkward moment of recognition, some fleeting scent, interrupting that triumphal chariot ride to whisper an unwelcome memento mori.The confusion of desires, anxieties, and all those compounding, competing thoughts paint such an evocative picture of the characters, in all their glory, fumbling but too filled with anticipation to really care. Too often, authors give us a celebration of something inhuman, something untouchable, rather than a celebration of a moment of true humanity.Victorian poetry is an unabashed exultation of the impossible, always recalling to me Edith Hamilton's observation in The Greek Way that a Greek paramour would no more have said his love were 'beautiful as Venus' than she would have believed it. 'Beautiful as a roadside daisy' is more than enough, and has the added benefit of being true.As I read along, I found myself comparing it to my own, earlier, abortive attempt to write in the subgenre. As usual, it only goes to show that if you don't read a genre before attempting to write in it, you're bound to cross familiar territory. Happily, I started on a rather different tack, so no complete rewrite is in order.This is not an easy book to simply rate. I enjoyed it, but to what degree, it's harder to say. In the end, I'm undecided whether this experiment ever exceeded its curious exploration to become a lasting story. As a vision, as a collection of ideas and characters, it is beyond reproach, but there is some faltering in the structure, a lack of cohesion which sometimes proves charming, and other times tiring.But for all its flaws, at least it is something new, something daring and, if somewhat too large for its confines, at least not too small for them. Odd that, procrastinator that I once was, here I am, late at night, writing a review for no reason at all--and yes, I did get my Shakespeare essay in on time.
What do You think about The Difference Engine (1992)?
Ok, so as far as I can tell, this book pretty much invented a lot of the steampunk trappings we take for granted. And the world-building is seriously awesome. There's some fascinating alt-history, lots of SCIENCE!, and mies and miles of clockwork computers running everything. The great horse races are replaced by mechanical guerneys, Japan makes wind up dolls out of whalebone, there's even a weird kind of digital animation. The whole thing is put together exceedingly cleverly. First rate world-b
—Rebecca
ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, two major SciFi powerhouses, joined forces to produce The Difference Engine, a classic steampunk novel which was nominated for the 1990 British Science Fiction Award, the 1991 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award and Prix Aurora Award. I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version which was produced in 2010 and read by the always-wonderful Simon Vance.The Difference Engine takes place in a nearly unrecognizable Victorian England. The fundamental “difference” between this alternate history and the real one is that Charles Babbage succeeded in building his Difference Engine — the first analytical computer. Thus, the information age develops (along with the industrial revolution) in the social, political, and scientific milieu of the 19th century. This little historical event — the development of the steam-powered computer — has a vast impact on subsequent history: Meritocracy takes hold in England (you’ll recognize many of England’s new “savant” lords), the American states never unite, Karl Marx makes Manhattan a commune, Benjamin Disraeli becomes a trashy tabloid writer, and Japan begins to emerge as a world power with England’s help.The idea of an earlier technological revolution affecting the course of history is fascinating. But the best part of The Difference Engine is the flash steampunk setting: full of gears and engines, pixilated billboards and slideshows, unreliable firearms, and lots of rum slang that’s right and fly.The problem with The Difference Engine is the plot. It meanders slowly and strangely and is vaguely focused on a box of computer punch-cards which contain unknown important information. Several people are interested in the cards including Sybil, a courtesan who’s based on Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil, mathematician Ada Lovelace (daughter of Lord Byron), a paleontologist nicknamed Leviathan Mallory, and the author Laurence Oliphant. Unfortunately, Mallory, who ends up being an Indiana Jones type of character, is the only one who’s interesting or likable. His segment of the novel has some exciting moments, but they seem only tangentially related to what comes before and after.Most of the events seem random, obscure, and unconnected. Perhaps the book is not at all about plot, though, because the authors seem to be trying to make a clever association between Gödel’s mathematical theorems, chaos theory, punctuated equilibrium, and artificial intelligence. I’m not really sure... If this is truly their intention, it is too thickly veiled and probably imperceptible to many readers. The Matrix-like ending will leave most people scratching their heads and wondering why they spent so many hours reading such inaccessible stuff.The Difference Engine is a smart and stylish concept novel that just doesn’t quite work.
—Kat Hooper
“The Difference Engine” was one of the books on my list as Must Read. The book is written by two if my favourite writers: Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. Both writers played an important role in for me liking Cyberpunk books. This book is one of the first books identified as Steam punk, which is appropriate because the story is situated in Victorian England and plays along the line of the development of steam engines. During the late 80-ties, Steam punk disconnected from Cyberpunk to become a separate genre.About the book: Although I credit both writers for their very good (other) books, this book as a result from their cooperation was a dragging experience to read. The story excels describing the world as it was during the Victorian age and the possible outcome of a different timeline if history took another course. The story itself is by times perfect but often confusing. The story sometimes stops completely and for no apparent reason switching over to a different storyline. If finally a storyline is clear and compels you to read further, a very dragging part comes up giving rise to the idea that the only goal of the writers was to fill the pages.Furthermore I’m used that some writers display a certain train of thought about lady personages, however each and every woman in this book is depicted as a whore or slut. Why?Don’t expect much from the characters in this book. The writers were not able to let the main characters develop during the progress of the story. This resulted in a collection of shallow personages not able to convince and fascinate the intended reader.So for me a ambivalent feeling finishing this book: On one hand wanting to know more about the world Sterling an Gibson were able to describe and on the other hand very glad to be rid of the shallow characters, erratic story changes, and a seemingly going nowhere plot. I’m sorry but I’m not able to give more than one star.
—Koen
