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The Difference Engine

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description The Difference Engine Overview

The Difference Engine is a 1990 alternate-history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It imagines a Victorian Britain in which Charles Babbage's mechanical calculating engines have been successfully developed, helping create an information-oriented industrial society decades earlier than in real history. Set largely in nineteenth-century London, the novel combines detective and political plots with a steampunk treatment of technology, class, and power.

help The Difference Engine FAQ

Who wrote The Difference Engine?

The Difference Engine was written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It was published in 1990 as an alternate-history novel about Victorian Britain.

What changes history in The Difference Engine?

The novel imagines Charles Babbage's mechanical calculating engines being successfully developed. That change creates a Victorian society shaped by information processing and advanced industrial machinery.

Is The Difference Engine set in the same world as Neuromancer?

No. Neuromancer is William Gibson's cyberpunk novel, while The Difference Engine is a separate alternate-history collaboration with Bruce Sterling set in Victorian Britain.

What kind of technology does The Difference Engine focus on?

Its central technology is mechanical computation based on Charles Babbage's difference and analytical engine ideas. The story explores how working calculating machines could reshape politics, industry, and social power in the nineteenth century.

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