The Difference Engine

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For the machine thought up by Charles Babbage, see difference engine

<tr><th>Country</th><td>United Kingdom</td></tr><tr><th>Language</th><td>English</td></tr><tr><th>Genre(s)</th><td>Alternate History, Steampunk</td></tr> <tr><th>Media Type</th><td>Print (Hardback)</td></tr><tr><th>Pages</th><td>256 pp</td></tr><tr><th>ISBN</th><td>ISBN 0-575-04762-3</td></tr>

**The Difference Engine**
Author	William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
Publisher	Gollancz
Released	September 1990

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.

1 Setting
2 Synopsis
3 Effect on Popular Culture
4 External links
5 Editions

[edit] Setting

The novel posits a Victorian England in which the Industrial Radical party, led by a longer-lived (because he never joined the Greek War of Independence) Lord Byron, took power and in which inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical digital computer (actually his analytical engine rather than the eponymous difference engine). Following this success, these massive computers have been mass-produced, and their use emulates the innovations which actually occurred during the information technology and Internet revolutions. The novel explores the social consequences of having such a revolution in the nineteenth century.

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.

In the novel, the British Empire is more powerful than it ever became at the height of the real British Empire thanks to the power of extremely advanced steam driven technology ranging from computers to airships. Britain rather than the United States opened Japan to Western trade, in part because the United States had never coalesced into one larger nation. 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 in Manhattan; 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?).

Among other historical characters, the novel features Texan President Sam Houston, as an exile after a political coup in Texas, a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley, as a Luddite, Benjamin Disraeli as a publicist and tabloid writer, and the utmost respect for Charles Darwin is expressed in the society.

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

During the story, many characters come to believe that the aforementioned set of special 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, when run, will prove two theorems which in reality would not be discovered until 1931 by Kurt Gödel.

[edit] Effect on Popular Culture

The novel inspired the title of the 2006 tour of British comic Bill Bailey: "Steampunk". Bailey wishes to explore current issues present within British society and politics, such as censorship, religious differences, and state control, while distancing himself from British realpolitik.

"The Difference Engine" is appropriate here because of Britain's relative strength, exaggerated both in this fiction and by the objects of current British satire, and also because much social and political change taking place is thought to stem from the modernising influence of computers.