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The Difference Engine

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The Difference Engine

By: Bruce Sterling, William Gibson
Narrated by: Andrew Cullum
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About this listen

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.

©2014 William Gibson (P)2021 W F Howes Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Steampunk Cyberpunk
All stars
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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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