The Difference Engine

Narrated by:
Simon Vance

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
7
Narrator
1
Release Date
November 2010
Duration
14 hours 22 minutes
Summary
1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. Three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with the future: Sybil Gerard—fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator; Edward “Leviathan” Mallory—explorer and paleontologist; Laurence Oliphant—diplomat, mystic, and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for.Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine took the science fiction community by storm when it was first published more than twenty years ago. Provocative, compelling, and intensely imagined, this novel is poised to impress a whole new generation.
Reviews
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Matt

Superb prose and great narration are wasted on very disappointing story. I am avid fan of William Gibson, but found the story lacked continuity and credulity. It revels in the style of Victorian the novel where men step into the fray with honor and duty, and all is jolly good, but it just read as being too over the top to be comfortable and without real benefit to the story. The "Difference Engine" was front and center in the narrative, as was an elusive box and its contents. The latter drove a large majority of the story with a hero gallantry battling to not let it fall into the hands of the villain solely due to his concept of a particular lady's honor (of which is hinted at and then confirmed that she has limited "honor") and yet these two items languidly trailed through the narrative where the first, is key to the "sci fi" theme of the story and the other the driver of the exploits with limited hints as to why it is so crucial and the irony that the contents truly are worth saving while it is the lack of the lady's honor that has place the contents in jepordy. It may be that the authors chose this path for the narative to poke the belly of the Victorian Novel Beast. They have fun standing Historical Figures on end, such that they have Lord Byron being the champion of the machine and the forceful opponent of the luddites. And for those aspects, the story does bring smiles due to how history and historical characters has been adapted. The last aspect of the story that, like the "Difference Engine" and the Box, is a crucial crux of the narrative. It is horrid fog that falls upon the city as the narrative moves towards an absurd battle scene. The fog is there. Hints as to its source are there. And then it just seems to go away.......... If not for the great narration and prose, I would have walked away from the story.

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Bchandler

If you like steam punk, this seems, in the beginning, to be a good. But then you start waiting for it to make a point or tie some of the loose strings together. BUT, it never does. It ends, and you're left wondering what all that was about. It introduces characters, then abandons them, starts with one style (multiple "iterations"), then drops that style too. Its as though this were written over several years and the author forgot what he'd done in the beginning. Don't bother with this one, it will leave you feeling like you've wasted your time - and you will have....

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VLibrarian

I count both authors in my top 50 list, and yet this book almost had me driving off the road in a bored paralysis. I didn't even finish it. Stay with Cyber punk and leave out the Steam.

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