The Difference Engine

A masterpiece of alternate history, a cornerstone of the steampunk subculture of "steam punk," the only example of full-fledged co-creation by two genre revolutionaries who are bound by the constraints of any genre. "The Difference Engine" is a large-scale, polyphonic... panorama of a world where, alongside the industrial revolution, an information revolution occurred, so that the computer arrived a century earlier than expected. A world where Charles Babbage built his difference engine, and power was seized from the aristocracy by radical lords led by Byron. A world where catastrophic paleontologists fiercely argue with uniformitarians, a commune led by Karl Marx took power in New York, computing capacities are measured by the total length of linkage of copper gears, London faces an ecological catastrophe, and Luddite rebels provide conspiracy theorists with rich food for thought…