The Difference Engine

The Difference Engine (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It has been described as an early work of the steampunk genre,

The novel received nominations for several major science fiction awards in the years following its publication. what Kirkus describes as a "Victorian alternate history". Matt Mitrovich, writing for AmazingStories.com, describes it—rather than as a novel—as being a "collection of three short stories and several snippets at the end all connected by a box of punch... cards [Engine cards]...", narrated in those stories by a distinct trio of historically repurposed or purely fictional POV characters:

First, Sybil Gerard, daughter of an earlier executed Luddite agitator (drawn into a conspiracy involving an alt history Sam Houston, here a "Texian" exiled and in London);
Second, the esteemed "savant" paleontologist and alt history discoverer of Brontosaurus, Edward “Leviathan” Mallory, a victim of serial attacks to lay claim to a parcel of world-changing importance, oddly entrusted to him; and
third, a fictional representation of Laurence Oliphant, as in real world, still a spy and diplomat, but introduced as Mallory's protector, continuing in the final story to investigate the early events of the book.

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The fictional historical background diverges from our timeline around 1824, at which point Charles Babbage completes his difference engine and proceeds to develop an Analytical Engine. He becomes politically powerful and at the 1830 general election successfully opposes the Tory Government of the Duke of Wellington. Although Wellington stages a coup d'état in 1830 in an attempt to overturn his defeat and prevent the acceleration of technological change and social upheaval, he is assassinated in 1831. The Industrial Radical Party, led by a Lord Byron who survives the Greek War of Independence, comes to power. The Tory Party and hereditary peerage are eclipsed, and British trade unions assist in the ascendancy of the Industrial Radical Party (much as they aided the Labour Party of Great Britain in the twentieth century in our own world). As a result, Luddite anti-technological working class revolutionaries are ruthlessly suppressed.

By 1855, the Babbage computers have become mass-produced and ubiquitous, and their use emulates the innovations that actually occurred during our information technology and Internet revolutions. Other steam-powered technologies have also developed and so, for example, Gurney steam carriages become increasingly common. The novel explores the social consequences of an information technology revolution in the nineteenth century, such as the emergence of "clackers" (a reference to hackers), technologically proficient people, such as Théophile Gautier, who are skilled at programming the Engines through the use of punched cards.

In the novel, the British Empire is empowered by the development and use of extremely-advanced steam-driven technology in industry, and are thus more powerful than in "our reality". In addition, similar military technology has enhanced the capabilities of the armed forces (airships, dreadnoughts, and artillery) and the Babbage computers themselves. Under the Industrial Radical Party, Britain shows the utmost respect for leading scientific and industrial figures such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Charles Darwin. Indeed, they are collectively called "savants" and often raised to the peerage on their merits, causing a break with the past as regards social prestige and class distinction. The new patterns are also reflected in the educational sphere: classical studies have lost importance<!--to more practical concerns such as engineering and accountancy.

Britain, rather than the United States, opened Japan to Western trade, in part because the United States became fragmented by interference from a Britain that foresaw the implications of a unified United States on the world stage. Counterpart successor states to our world's United States include a (truncated) United States; the Confederate States of America; the Republic of Texas; the Republic of California; a communist Manhattan Island commune (with Karl Marx as a leading light); British North America (analogous to Canada, albeit slightly larger in this world); and Russian America (Alaska). In the novel, an entente exists betweenNapoleon III's French Empire and the British, and Napoleon is married to a British woman.

In the world of The Difference Engine, France occupies Mexico, as it did briefly in reality during the American Civil War. Like Great Britain, it has its own analytical/difference engines (ordinateurs), especially used in the context of domestic surveillance within its police force and intelligence agencies. As for the other world powers, Germany remains fragmented, with no suggestion that Prussia will eventually form the core of a unified nation, as it did in our own timeline in 1871, which may be caused by French sabotage analogous to that pursued in the case of the fragmentation of the United States noted above. Japan is awakening after the British ended its isolation, and looks, as in our timeline, set to become one of this world's leading industrial and economic powers from the 20th century onward.

The intervention of Lords Byron and Babbage provide famine relief with grain confiscated from the landed aristocracy. The Great Famine of Ireland never occurred, there is no agitation for Irish home rule or Irish independence and the Irish instead have become enthusiastic supporters of the Radical regime. A Spanish Civil War is mentioned to be taking place in 1855 with one side being the Royalists, and in 1905, possibly as a result of that conflict, there is an independent Republic of Catalonia.

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 pixellated screens), and Benjamin Disraeli as a publicist and tabloid writer.-->

Plot

First Iteration. The Angel of Goliad. In 1855, Sybil Gerard, daughter of an executed Luddite leader and going by the name Sybil Jones, is a dolly-mop targeting upper-class men. She is recruited by Mick Radley, secretary to Sam Houston, to support Houston's cause in Britain. Mick carries a set of 'kino cards' encoding visuals for Houston's upcoming presentation and a case of punch cards that purport to encode a betting system, or 'modus'. Before one of Houston's speeches, Mick has Sybil send the case of punch cards to Paris.

Houston steals Mick's kino card set to remove Mick's leverage over him, and Mick enlists Sybil to steal them back again. Sybil distracts the hotel concierge by composing a confrontational telegram to Charles Egremont, an MP and a former lover, in his presence while Mick obtains the key to Houston's hotel room. Sybil, acting alone, gains access to the room and finds a Texian assassin lying in wait to kill Houston. He interrogates Sybil, and murders Mick when he enters the room. Later, the Texian attacks Houston when he arrives, wounding him, damaging his raven-headed cane, and ruining the kino card set Houston has tucked in his waistband. The assassin escapes. Sybil finds large diamonds hidden inside Houston's hollow cane and departs for Paris alone, with tickets taken from Mick's dead person. It is indicated that Houston survives the assassination attempt.

Second Iteration. Derby Day. Edward Mallory, a palaeontologist and explorer, is visiting his friends participating in a gurney race derby. There, he encounters Lady Ada Byron being accosted by a man and a woman. After Mallory fights the man and woman over their treatment of Lady Byron, she gives Mallory a case containing punch cards and returns to her family. The man, fashioning himself 'Captain Swing', threatens to 'destroy' Mallory unless he returns the punch cards. As part of his attempts, Swing begins spreading rumours that Mallory was responsible for the death of his rival, Rudwick. Mallory hides the case of punch cards in the skull of the exhibit of the dinosaur he discovered, the Brontosaurus.

Third Iteration. Dark Lanterns. Laurence Oliphant meets Mallory to offer him police protection. Oliphant argues Rudwick died as a result of a conspiracy and Mallory could be the next target, as both had received sponsorship for their research work in return for supplying arms to Native American tribes to check the expansion of the United States. Mallory agrees to Oliphant's offer after he is tailed and attacked in the street. With the help of Andrew Wakefield, Oliphant's contact at the Central Bureau of Statistics, Mallory identifies Florence Bartlett, the woman he saw accosting Lady Byron at the derby. It is suggested that Bartlett brought the case of punch cards that Sybil Gerard had sent to France back to England. Mallory sends Lady Byron a letter which reveals where the case of punch cards is hidden. 'The Stink', a major episode of pollution in which London is covered by an inversion layer (comparable to the London Smog of December 1952), causes much of London's elite to leave. Mallory is accompanied around the city by Ebenezer Fraser, a secret police officer, but Fraser is wounded by looters as civil order begins to break down.

Fourth Iteration. Seven Curses. Mallory leaves Fraser at the police station and meets Hetty, a dolly-mop who knew Sybil. Mallory spends the night with Hetty in Whitechapel. The next morning, order has collapsed further, and Mallory makes his way back to the Palace of Palaeontology. On the way, he notices advertisements, commissioned by Swing, claiming Mallory murdered Rudwick and decrying the excesses of the rule of savants. After meeting his brothers at the Palace and hearing that their sister's engagement was broken thanks to rumours spread about her infidelity by Swing, Mallory gathers them and a recovered Fraser to attack Swing. They infiltrate Swing's location, finding communists from Manhattan there. After recognising Florence Bartlett as a lecturer among them, Mallory and his group starts a fight with them. They manage to hold off until rain ends the Stink and a river ironclad fires at Swing's location. Fraser apprehends Swing.

Fifth Iteration. The All Seeing Eye. A year later, Oliphant pursues his investigations into the disorder accompanying The Stink, while having persistent visions of an all-seeing eye. He identifies a dead Texian, poisoned by Bartlett, as the assassin responsible for murdering Mick Radley and Rudwick. After the Prime Minister, Lord Byron, dies during the Stink and is replaced by Brunel, Charles Egremont has begun eliminating old associates in an effort to hide his past as the one who betrayed Sybil Gerard's father to his death. Florence Bartlett is informed by Lady Byron of the location of the long-sought case of Ada Byron's cards. With a crew, Bartlett attempts to steal the cards, but is thwarted, and dies in a firefight with soldiers and policemen as she attempts to escape. Oliphant, secretly having secured the cards, uses Wakefield's help to acquire the telegram that Sybil had sent Egremont. Oliphant confronts Wakefield, who is clearly fearful, and their discussion reveals that as a part of their efforts on behalf of state security, the two of them have had individual identities of those deemed enemies fully erased from records, and thus from a history of existence. Oliphant heads for Paris to meet with French intelligence, and to meet Sybil, intending to get testimony with which to blackmail Egremont. Oliphant's meeting with his French counterpart reveals that the case of punch cards, when sent to Paris, was run through France's equivalent Engine by a 'clacker', causing it to malfunction. After meeting and persuading Sybil that his cause is dedicated to their mutual safety, Oliphant returns to London, but falls ill; his Japanese protege next appears, to the good humor of the recipient, and presents Egremont with a communique, presumably the testimony of Sybil, via Oliphant. Ada, Lady Byron delivers a lecture in France, the narrator there describing her as "The Mother". She is chaperoned by Fraser; Sybil, who attends Ada's lecture, seeks her out afterward, addresses her with undue familiarity, and after giving offense, expresses sympathy for her challenges, and gives her a gift of a ring, bearing a large, uncut diamond. Frasier and Ada return to their apartments, take stock of their finances, contemplate their next speaking tour, and in a moment of vulnerability, Lady Byron asks if the familiar insults of Sybil actually characterise who she is; Frasier responds, no, Ada, you are "La Reine des Ordinateurs”" (The Queen of Computers, or "of Machines"). Using a reflection in a mirror as the point of segue, the narrative shifts to 1991, where a vast Engine is now described as simulating the lives of all of humankind in London.

Characters

Sybil Jones / Sybil Gerard, POV narrator in the First Iteration, daughter of an executed Luddite leader and so with a hidden past, recruited by one to assist Sam Houston's cause, Sterling has reported that the novel's Michael Godwin character was named after attorney Mike Godwin, as thanks for his assistance in linking Sterling and Gibson's computers, allowing their collaboration between Austin and Vancouver.

References

External links

Editions of The Difference Engine at WorldCat.org

Plot

Characters

References

Further reading

External links