In The Difference Engine, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling create a science fiction world set in an alternate universe 1855 London. Inventors run rampant with new steampunk gadgets. The United States of America is split into four parts, including a proto-Confederacy, the Republic of Texas, and the Republic of California. France and Mexico support the exiled Sam Houston in a planned invasion of the Republic of Texas, while England, ruled by scientists and poets, looks on in horror.
The book bounces between Sybil Gerard, an anti-government activist opposed to the era’s rapid technological advances; Edward Mallory, a paleontologist who has discovered numerous new dinosaur fossils; and Laurence Oliphant, a journalist who is close to Mallory and who takes down the story of the book’s improbable events. Mallory is the default protagonist, starring in three of the book’s five parts. The action centres on his uncanny victory in a race between steampunk-ish machines in “Derby Day” (see below), concomitant with his reception of a mysterious rosewood box that leads a criminal gang to pursue him. When London rapidly turns lawless, Mallory and his brothers realize they have no traditional police protection, so they and an undercover detective seek out the gang’s ringleader.
The First Iteration, “The Angel of Goliad”, introduces characters who will either never be seen again or who will only be seen again much later, making it feel like the main action while reading it but like an extended prologue for the rest of the book. Mick Radley, who stars alongside Gerard in “The Angel of Goliad”, explains what many of us in 2020 still think: that technological progress, not activism, is what propels the world forward. In a world where Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace (Byron) are nobles, Radley tells Gerard that “Lord Charles Babbage made blueprints while we made pamphlets. And his blueprints built this world.” (27) The action peaks in “Derby Day”, when Mallory’s character is introduced at a race of what appear to be horse-drawn steam gurneys; (111) a diagram would have been helpful. At the urging of his friend Mr. Godwin, Mallory makes the rash but lucky decision to bet a considerable sum.* Mallory’s Ted Mosby-stylelecturing would come later in the book; in “Derby Day”, he is a high-stakes gambler. The juxtaposition of Mallory receiving a rosewood box from Lady Byron and being accosted by a shadowy criminal while the race is raging is the high point of the plot. (112)
Mallory’s discovery of the “Land Leviathan”, among other dinosaur species, is central to his character. His discussions of (in this philosopher king-ruled universe) Lord Charles Darwin and Lord Francis Galton** tie into the inquisitive, and ultimately long-winded, nature of everything he does. The recounts of his paleontological expeditions took me back to my summer 2019 trip to London, when people could travel internationally without quarantining themselves for 14 days. One of London’s unheralded finds is the first dinosaur statues, located in and around a series of lagoons at Crystal Palace, dating from the mid-1850s.
The eventual importance of the Land Leviathan to the plot is, of course, not to be spoiled for the upcoming reader of The Difference Engine.
At times, the reader is overly immersed into the book’s setting. Just like That ‘70s Show was more ‘70s than the ‘70s in its constant rehashing of the era’s tropes, The Difference Engine sometimes plays up 1855 to the point that it distracts from the plot. Nearly every country in the world is mentioned. Slang from the era is wedged into the characters’ speech. I believed it was 1855 even before Brian Mallory, Edward’s brother, explains who Sepoys were. Mallory’s occupation as a paleontologist, and Brian’s occupation as a military officer, explains why they travel so far, but not all of the available information needs to find its way to the page.
Gibson and Sterling’s short, clipped writing style is a boon in a genre that frequently lends itself to interminable expositions. Pages of dialogue fly by, with a paragraph break every second line. As someone who has struggled through run-on paragraphs*** more times than I can count, reading such a fast-paced book in such a world-building-rich genre is an experience I would be thrilled to repeat.
One of my traditions on this blog is giving credit to authors who introduce me to new words, a task that I assure you gets increasingly difficult as the years wear on. Gibson and Sterling introduced me to three: decoction, the resultant flavoured water after boiling a plant (195); batrachian, of or relating to a frog or toad; (201) and harridan, “a scolding, vicious woman”. (434) Next time I make tea, I suppose I will call it a “decoction”, which will hopefully not be so irritable it turns anyone in my vicinity into a batrachian harridan.
My copy is the 20th anniversary edition, which is fitting, because it’s The Difference Engine’s 30th anniversary this year. As with any forward-looking sciencefiction novel, The Difference Engine’s 1855 contains similarities to 2020. Due to London’s air pollution, the characters have to wear masks, (304) reminiscent of the world’s current COVID-19-induced experience. Lack of meaningful police presence in parts of London causes disgruntled local residents to enforce the peace themselves, (357-358) reminiscent of the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, Washington earlier this year. Finally, there is a character unluckily named Andrew Wakefield, the same name as the doctor who wrote the since-debunked report inspiring legions of anti-vaccination activists the world over.
Sadly, The Difference Engine doesn’t contain a table of contents. It is split into six large parts, rather than traditional chapters, each containing a number of scenes. Whether Gibson and Sterling decided on the lack of table of contents, or the publisher did, I have rectified the problem by creating a table of contents as follows:
o
First Iteration: The Angel of Goliad (3)
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Second Iteration: Derby Day (84)
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Third Iteration: Dark-Lanterns (115)
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Fourth Iteration: Seven Curses (247)
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Fifth Iteration: The All-Seeing Eye**** (368)
o
Modus: The Images Tabled (451)
o Afterword (487)
I wouldn’t usually emphasize an afterword this much, but Gibson’s commentary is so interesting I have a couple things to say about it. One is that Gibson reveals that there is a narrator in what was ostensibly a third-person omniscient novel, the “Narratron”, a sentient computer that somehow witnesses all these events, (488) including Mallory’s visit to a prostitute. (257-270) At no point in The Difference Engine did I ever get a whiff of the Narratron or anything like it, even if, as Gibson says, its identity is ever so sort of revealed on the book’s last page. The Narratron’s failure to exist does not subtract from The Difference Engine, so why Gibson bothered to mention it, I have no clue.
The final page of Gibson’s afterword includes an epigram that, although Gibson meant it to apply to literature, I think applies equally well to those who lionize cherry-picked details of their favourite historical figures: “When you raise the dead, they bring their baggage.” (492) Or maybe it just describes a zombie movie that takes place in an airport.
Ease of Reading: 8Educational Content: 3
*Mallory bets 50 pounds, which was equal to 2,369.05 in 1990, when The Difference Engine came out; Mallory wins 400 pounds, equal to 18,952.38 in 1990.
**Francis Galton was, among other things, one of the fathers of modern statistics. He was also an ardent eugenicist, which the book mentions despite not mentioning anything about Galton’s advancements in statistics. It’s a “Solingen is where Adolf Eichmann was from, but we won’t even bother mentioning its centuries-long metalworkingtraditions” moment, I suppose.
***A cousin of the better-known run-on sentence, the run-on paragraph is: a paragraph that includes so many thoughts it would have been better broken up into multiple paragraphs.
****Despite this iteration title and the abundance of secrecy in The Difference Engine, the book makes no mention of Freemasonry. I was surprised by that.
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