The Difference Engine

My review of the second Steampunk novel I bought a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

The Difference Engine. Widely regarded as being the novel any self-respecting Steampunk must own, or, at the very least, read. So where to start?

The synopsis, I suppose. Imagine for a moment the Industrial Revolution. And now imagine that Charles Babbage, the father of the computer, succeeded in getting funding for his Analytical Engine in the 1840s. Had it not been for his death, it would have happened.

In the book he lives, and his Analytical Engine is an unbridled success. And with that, the Industrial Revolution goes into overdrive. It is now 1855, a year in our own timeline which saw the Great Stink, the completion of the bones of the British railway network, the Crimean war and not much else. In the book, the computer has made possible great technological advances years before they actually happened.

In the book, 1855 sees a fully functioning underground railway system, 8 years before our own was even begun. Tarmac is widely used for road surfaces, 70 years before it was even invented in reality. Horse drawn carriages have been completely replaced by steam-driven conveyances. Credit cards are widely used, and great skyscrapers grace the skyline of London.

But this progress has its enemies, the Luddites. In the 1830s, political turmoil saw the engineers and the proponents of mechanisation come out on top. The Ludds ere ruthlessly put down, but now they are returning.

The book follows the struggle between the Luddites and the Industrial Radicals, under the leadership of Lords Byron, Brunel and Babbage.

And it is truly epic.

The book is absolutely packed with period details, which creates a world that strikes the reader as being eminantly plausible. The characters can easily be identified with and actually feel human, rather than being the product of Gibson and Stephenson's imaginations.

There are a few imperfections- the endpiece of the chapters I felt had little to add to the plot and rarely actually made sense. The end itself is ambiguous to say the best. But, and this is the thing, these really don't matter. The greatest imperfection I can find is that this is a stand alone work. It needs a sequel, or, even better, an entire series.