As with Poodle Springs, the unfinished novel by Raymond Chandler that was finished off by Robert B Parker, I’ve made the mistake of imagining that a collaboration by someone I like will be as good as their solo work.
I’ve enjoyed William Gibson’s books in the past but haven’t read anything by Bruce Sterling. I’m very unlikely to now. The Difference Engine has a good enough science fiction premise: rather than procrastinating into his grave, Charles Babbage finished his work on the difference engine, bestowing computing power on Victorian England. Tiny gears and punch cards enter the world of hansom cabs and gas lamps to shift the character of the diminishing imperial power.
Computerised record keeping has become supremely important and each citizen has a number, making the government led by Lord Byron (for some reason that isn’t explained) a fascist state that takes the prison designs of Jeremy Bentham (the Panopticon was a circular building with the cells around the edges with watchful guards in the centre. the inmates could never be sure when they were being observed so would behave as though they always were) and applies them to society as a whole, mirroring the surveillance culture of modern times.
The computer programmers (clackers) provide the substrate that controls all other aspects of the culture. Luddites abound in their dark, secret rooms and Ada Byron, the real daughter of Lord Byron and the first computer programmer, is an icon.
There’s a thinnish plot about a paleontologist who believes in the catastrophist theory of evolution as oppose to the picture of gradual change that makes up conventional wisdom, handily providing a clunking great metaphor for the transition from slow historical movement to the rapid pace of the computerised world. In case you don’t get it to begin with you’re bludgeoned with catastrophist arguments throughout the text. He makes some money on a bet (which is probably the breakdown of the class structure and the hegemony of the landed gentry) and defends the country against an anarchist plot, as he’s a thrusting young democrat.
Lady Byron entrusts him with some punch cards that turn out to be a program for a gambling system, but the nature of the objects themselves doesn’t seem to be all that important, it’s only the significance that comes from their being the property of the Queen of Engines that the reader needs to take notice of.
In fact the addition of computers appeared to make very little difference to the goings on. There are some new words and a new job – the kinotropist, an operator of computer controlled screens – but Victorian society was already led by engineers and industrialists, they could just as easily be talking about iron-hulled ships. Replace Babbage with Brunel and you have a similar story with no alternative technology at all.
As well as beating you about the face with its subtext as you read, it crams your head full of a dreadful cheesy cockney patois to let you know when you’re dealing with a member of the working classes. Gor, miss that one and you’re a cakey dollymop and no mistake. It drove me up the wall.
The Difference Engine might have inspired a generation of steampunk obsessives but it’s a terrible book. Don’t bother.
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4 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.Wow. I read this a couple of years ago after it was foisted upon me by a fan and absolutely loved it, so interesting to read from something totally the other end of the love spectrum.ie rampant dislike. Have forgotten most of the actual plot points, but have warm memories of grimy descriptions of steampunk Whitechapel and an awful lot of gin. Rollicking easy read anyway. And books that feature gin heavily are always a win for me.
It does have a style of its own, although I did feel that the extended middle section in the great stink felt like one voice and the rest felt like another. If that style chimes with you then I can see why you might have liked it but, as you can probably tell from the post, I really didn’t like it at all.
Raymond Chandler’s a big gin man, I’d go for him any day.
The closest I’ve got to reading Chandler is Sebastian Faulks’ Pistache of him re Wodehouse. Er, must try harder?
Chandler’s fantastic. Go and read The Big Sleep immediately.