Customer Reviews
Good idea, badly executed - By: Horrocks, 28 Jun 2008 
Take Victorian Britain, crank up the industrial revolution a couple of notches, have the governmentin the hands of a pragmatic Lord Byron as Prime Minister, place science to the fore, add information technology based on Charles Babbage's mechanical Engines, then make America at war with itself.
Now add a pugnacious paleantologist, a deposed Texan president, his audio-visual assistant, a villaness, a villan, another villan, lots of anarchists, cover London with the Great Stink (which really happened) , stir well & you have the makings of an interesting story.......
.....however notin this book. It just doesn't work. It's very, very obvious it has two authors, which is a shame as both Gibson & Stirling have written some splendid books on their own.
I would like to recommend this book, but quite honestly it was a relief to reach the last page. I would recommend it if I could figure out what it was about, but I can't, so I won't.
Potentially fascinating but unfulfilling - By: G. Kelly, 26 Mar 2008 
The premise for this story is fascinating & offered so much more potential than was realised by these authors. I found the narrative confused & rather tedious. The characters are rather weakly drawn across several plot strands which don't really meet up successfully. Is that a consequence of having two joint authors I wonder? The exciting possibilities to exploit the narrative around the technology are not developed fully. Perhaps for such an original & visual theme, it explains why this story has not been picked up for a movie?
Alternate History by a Cyber-Punk master - By: M. R. N. Shackelford, 20 Feb 2007 
This is a story of how things might have been if the brilliant Charles Babbage had succeededin creating his Computer (the Difference Engine) - all brass cogs, gears & thundering steam.
William Gibson (whose other books such as the stunning Neuromancer et al. are quite different) & Bruce Sterling have expanded this idea & peopled a reinvented Victorian Age with real namesin new situations.
As someone who often thinks he would have liked to have been a Victorian (if only they had had more technology) this book is just perfect. I have now read it three times - & still thought it was excellent on the third time round.
Do not expect anything similar to Gibson's other sci-fi or else you will be disappointed. If, on the other hand you really enjoyed Neal Stephenson's (similar-ish) "Diamond Age" - then "The Difference Engine" is the book for you.
Great text book - By: , 16 Jul 2005 Unfortunately dry.
This book is packed with great historical ideas & intriguing inventions, but so are many physics & history books. Sadly for this book many academic books have more accessible & enjoyable story arcs.
wasted effort - By: RAMON, 28 Feb 2005 
I found this bookin John Clute's encyclopedia of Science fiction, as one of the classics of the 90's. I run to read it & was disappointed, like many other reviewers.
The plot gets lost: everything starts with some computer punch cards, butin the end nobody knows what those cards are, where they come from, why, etc...
The other parts of the plot suffer from this inconsistency: we get a wonderful description of victorian England, but all the time we keep waiting for a move, which doesn't come. Even the central part of the novel - the riotsin smoke clouded London- are not coherently explained.
One is made believe that a conspirancy exists, but we don't know why or how.
Gibson & Sterling write well, but this is clearly not enough.
