The Difference Engine (1990) is an alternative
history novel by William Gibson and Bruce
Sterling.
It is widely regarded as a book that helped
establish the genre conventions of steampunk.
It posits a Victorian era Britain in which
great technological and social change has
occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles
Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build
a mechanical computer (actually his Analytical
Engine rather than the difference engine).
The novel was nominated for the British Science
Fiction Award in 1990, the Nebula Award for
Best Novel in 1991, and both the John W. Campbell
Memorial Award and the Prix Aurora Award in
1992.
== Setting ==
The novel is chiefly set in 1855.
The 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.
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, but 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 which actually occurred
during our information technology and Internet
revolutions.
Other steam-powered technologies have also
developed, so, for example, Gurney steam carriages
are an increasingly common sight.
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 more powerful
than in our reality, thanks to the development
and use of extremely advanced steam-driven
technology in industry.
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.
These new patterns are also reflected in the
educational sphere: classical studies have
lost importance compared 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, due to interference
from a Britain which 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); Russian America (Alaska);
and terra nullius.
Napoleon III's French Empire holds an entente
with the British and Napoleon is even married
to a British woman.
In the world of The Difference Engine, it
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 world in 1871,
which may be due to 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 world,
set to become one of this world's leading
industrial and economic powers from the twentieth
century onward.
Due to the intervention of Lords Byron and
Babbage, providing famine relief with grain
confiscated from the landed aristocracy, the
Irish potato famine never occurred, and as
a result there is no agitation for Irish home
rule or Irish independence, and the Irish
instead have become enthusiastic supporters
of the Radical regime.
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.
== Plot summary ==
The action of the story follows Sybil Gerard,
a political courtesan and daughter of an executed
Luddite leader; Edward "Leviathan" Mallory,
a paleontologist and explorer; and Laurence
Oliphant, a historical figure with a real
career, as portrayed in the book, as a travel
writer whose work was 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.
Many characters come to believe that the punch
cards are a gambling "modus", a programme
that would allow the user to place consistently
winning bets.
The last chapter reveals that the punched
cards represent a program that proves two
theorems which, in reality, would not be discovered
until 1931 by Kurt Gödel.
Ada Lovelace delivers a lecture on the subject
in France.
Defending the cards, Mallory gathers his brothers
and Ebenezer Fraser – a secret police officer
– 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 (comparable
to the London Smog of December 1952).
After the abortive uprising, Oliphant and
Sybil Gerard meet at a cafe in Paris.
Oliphant informs her that he is aware of her
true identity, but will not pursue it, although
he does want information that would compromise
her seducer, Charles Egremont MP, now regarded
as an obstacle to the strategies and political
ambitions of Lords Brunel and Babbage.
Sybil has longed for an opportunity for vengeance
against Egremont, and the resultant political
scandal destroys his parliamentary career
and aspirations for a merit lordship.
Oliphant also encounters a Manhattan-based
group of feminist pantomime artists.
After several vignettes that elaborate on
the alternate historical origins of the world
of The Difference Engine, Lovelace delivers
her lecture on Gödel's Theorem, as its counterpart
is known in our world.
She is chaperoned by Fraser, and castigated
by Sybil Gerard, who is still unable to forgive
Ada's father, the late Lord Byron, for his
role in her own father's death.
At the very end of the novel, there is a depiction
of an alternate 1991 from the vantage point
of a computer, which is revealed to be the
narrator as it achieves self-awareness.
== Characters ==
The character Michael Godwin was named after
attorney Mike Godwin as thanks for his technical
assistance in linking Sterling and Gibson's
computers to allow them to collaborate between
Austin and Vancouver.
The characters of Sybil Gerard (and her father
Walter Gerard,) Charles Egremont and Dandy
Mick are all borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli's
novel Sybil
== 
Literary criticism and significance ==
The novel has attracted the attention of scholars,
including Jay Clayton, who explores the book's
attitude toward hacking, as well as its treatment
of Babbage and Ada Lovelace; Herbert Sussman,
who demonstrates how the book rewrites Benjamin
Disraeli's novel Sybil; and Brian McHale,
who relates it to the postmodern interest
in finding a "new way of 'doing' history in
fiction."The novel was nominated for the British
Science Fiction Award in 1990, the Nebula
Award for Best Novel in 1991, and both the
John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Prix
Aurora Award in 1992.
== Influence ==
The 1993 video game The Chaos Engine (released
as Soldiers of Fortune in the USA) was based
on The Difference Engine.The 2003 grand strategy
wargame, Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun
features an easter egg in which the Manhattan
Commune is a release-able nation.
The nation also appears in the 2010 sequel
Victoria II
