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The Difference Engine

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The Difference Engine

By: William Gibson, Bruce Sterling
Narrated by: Andrew Cullum
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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 palaeontologist; 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. It is a prime example of the steampunk sub-genre; It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer called Engines. Provocative, compelling, and intensely imagined, this audiobook is poised to impress a whole new generation. Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Steampunk
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I expected the various aspects of the stories to come together in the end but they really didn’t. Overall there was a lack of narrative and no closure.
The reader seemed a little off for my tastes, but might be fine for someone else.

An interesting premise that went nowhere

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The development of the computer hundreds of years early is used as no more than a mcguffin. All that's left is a plodding Victorian drama, poorly written and without even a consistent plot.

Save yourself 16 hours and give this one a pass.

A great idea wasted

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