Book: The Difference Engine

“Zero History completed. 644 ms. pages, which is longer, for me.” William Gibson, 3/25/2010, via Twitter

Last summer I decided to re-read Gibson’s seminal “Neuromancer.” It may well be my favorite SF novel of all time, certainly my favorite non-Heinlein SF. I read it on the Stanza app on my iPhone, largely while at 6th Grade Science camp with my son. Reading that again led to “Burning Chrome,” Gibson’s short story collection. If there is a finer short SF piece than “Dogfight,” written with Michael Swanwick, please point it out. Which led to a drive to re-read the rest of Gibson’s first three novels, sometimes called the “Sprawl Trilogy,” including “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive.” “Count” seemed very much a middle book, but “Mona Lisa” had one of my all-time favorite characters, Slick Henry, an ex-con who suffers from induced Korsakov’s and is compelled to create art in the form of giant, functioning robotic sculptures.
Onward with the Gibson oeuvre, I decided to re-read “The Difference Engine,” co-written with Bruce Sterling.

“Every woman needs a man to hold her reins,” Fraser said.  It’s God’s plan for the relations of men and women.”
Mallory scowled.
Fraser saw his look, and thought the matter over again.  ”It’s Evolution’s adaptation for the human species,” he amended.
Mallory nodded slowly.

Babbage’s Difference Engine, completed by his son.

“The Difference Engine” represents the birthplace of “steampunk,” an odd movement that refuses to die, its engines stoked almost daily by the likes of BoingBoing. The book posits an alternate history where Charles Babbage is successful in perfecting his Difference Engine and mid-19th Century England develops computing technology. That is the backdrop to a fairly typical Gibson-style adventure involving a macguffin drawing multiple protagonists into a complex intersection. The bulk of the book is taken up by the tale of Edward Mallory, a paleontologist recently returned from America where he uncovered a Brontosaurus. Mallory is a “savant,” a scientist of such high stature in Prime Minister Byron’s England that it results in the award of a “Merit Lordship.” Mallory early on takes possession of the macguffin, having really no idea what it is, and then falls afoul of the dark forces that want it back.
They typical Gibsonian troika of characters is rounded out by Sybil Gerard, the daughter of a slain Luddite leader and Laurence Oliphant, a shadowy component of the England intelligence apparatus.
There is a lot going on in this book. The real centerpiece is the transformative effect technology has had on 1850’s England. Gibson and Stirling create a world where computing technology is at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. So we have computers helping design the earliest cars. Programming is done via punch-card, so programs are collections of cards, and hackers are “clackers.” That’s just fucking great.
Ned Mallory is a compelling character and it devolves upon him to save London from Luddites seeking to over-throw Babbage and Byron.
This is a very fine book, even if it sort of collapses as it approaches the finish line. There are thirty or forty pages at the end of the book that try to wrap things up, different snippets of letters and speeches from various parties having (mostly) tangential relations to the story at hand. It kind of feels like Stirling and Gibson had written a bunch of stuff around the novel and had nothing better to do with it than glue it on at the end. The kind of thing that today might be a “web extra” or something. It’s not bad, it just feels bolted on and kind of unnecessary.
The work — the London of “The Difference Engine” is so dense and vibrant that it stands as a grand achievement without requiring a powerful narrative. It is an achievement equal to “Ring World” or Bradbury’s Mars or maybe even Tolkein’s Middle Earth. Well, maybe not Middle Earth. But astounding, nonetheless.

So Gibson’s new novel “Zero History” is due September 7th. I now have a deadline for my Gibson-walk. I’ll have to get through the “Bridge Trilogy” (Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties) plus the first two books of the trilogy that ZH is apparently a part of (Pattern Recognition and Spook Country) in the next six months. I’ve read all of those books, of course, but I don’t know that I’ve read any of them more than once, as compared to his first four (five if you include “Burning Chrome”) which I have read several times apiece. I’ll do a write-up of each building up to the new book.
I don’t think it is a stretch to call Gibson SF’s greatest living writer. May he live long.