Baba's Reviews > The Difference Engine

SF Masterworks (2010- series) #17: First published in the 1990 this book was one of the prime foundations of the steampunk movement, a movement that could have been that more improved if it went into the detail and scope of this book. An alternate history reality in which steam-driven Babbage Difference engines worked the way Babbage foresaw and hence the computing age occurs in the early 19th Century and the writers get into so much detail of the effect on the world and more so on the British Empire in their mostly 1855 set book.
A Difference Engine

This is the story of a criminal conspiracy around either damaging or hijacking the Engine's tech, where we follow a number of points of view in distinct chapters. The story is pretty banal and I stopped caring pretty early on. The writers seemed so focused on their constructed reality (which is indeed awesome), they seemed to use all their creativity fleshing out their re-imagined world where the Wellington (Duke of), Brunel, Byron, Keats, Prince Albert, Lovelace, Darwin etc. lead different public lives. They also mapped out the different global history from a un-united States of America through to the Brits supporting the Irish during The Potato Famine! A case of a well-thought and exceptional constructed alternate history reality (the reason it got added to the SF Masterworks?), and a story that just doesn't work for me, at all! 3 out of 12