The Difference Engine

Two of “cyberpunk's” finest authors combining to write a Steampunk alternative history set in Victorian England? What could possibly go wrong? Well...

This one is a bit of a curate's egg. Fine writing and stuffed full of fantastic ideas, with a really intriguing premise (the computer age arrives in the mid-19th century courtesy of Charles Babbage's titular Difference Engine) but somehow the sum of its parts doesn't quite hold together. Maybe it's the shifting focus where different characters take the lead in each section. Maybe it's the revelling in the world building at the expense of the rather convoluted plot. I don't know. I wanted to like this more than I did.

Cantering around a mysterious set of engine punch cards called The Modus, this rip roaring tale is set in a world where Great Britain's Empire rules the world, the USA is a country divided against itself (Texas is a republic, the Confederacy exists and Manhattan becomes a communist stronghold thanks to Karl Marx!) and secret agents stalk the London streets. Lord Byron is Prime Minister, leading the so-called Radical Party that had overthrown the Tories under Wellington, and a steam driven age of wonder is upon us. It's a richly detailed world, especially the couple of chapters cantering around the Big Stink of 1855 (although I could have done without the rather graphic descriptions of one character's dalliance with a prostitute, which goes on for far too long). Gibson and Sterling clearly had great fun imagining the What Ifs that would follow from computers being developed a century or so before they actually were.

But somehow it never quite comes together in a satisfying way. The final section extrapolates forward from the events of the previous chapters, with short testimonies and letters and a final scene with an ageing Lady Ada Byron in Paris. If this is supposed to tie up loose ends, it fails to do so.

So an interesting, if frustrating read.