The Difference Engine, (Paperback)

from elenchus

Gibson & Sterling's The Difference Engine was about as I remembered it. Not the details: these I almost always forget, and here the authors truly shone in their inventiveness and world-making. Factual descriptions of Babbage's Analytical Engine (design, operation, sheer massive presence), geopoli...

from Smiler69

I wish I could say what I think about this novel, but in order to do that, I'd have to know what it was about, and I honestly have no idea. It's set in an alternate past in the 19th century, there were plenty of interesting bits, there was a lot of talk about engines, which as I understood are pr...

from geneticblend

The Difference Engine is a poster-child of Steampunk, and Steampunk is a visually rich sub-genre. Anime and film capture, for example, the armored, steam-powered vehicles with their puffing and chugging, all-a-clacking with gears and pistons a la Miyazaki Hayao (Laputa, Nausicaä), The City of the...

from lkernagh

Hum... I guess it is a good thing that I was already a fan of steampunk as a genre before reading this one, because if not, this would have turned me off the genre. Don't get me wrong, the authors have created quite an interesting alternate reality of 1850s Victorian times filled with Victorian t...

from Cecilturtle

To say that I was disappointed is to put it mildly. I'm not a big fan of science fiction, but I knew that Gibson is heralded as one of the best: I thought this book might be a good introduction. What a mistake! Whereas I started with an open mind and enjoyed the writing and attention to detail, I...