Customer Reviews (1)

Good at the time, but...
I remember reading this book circa 1994 as a graduate student at Rice University.It was very interesting, and I found Bruce Sterling's praise of librarians & libraries and the importance of freedom of information very eloquent and uplifting.Hans Moravec, on the other hand, I find to be one sick puppy and scary to boot.He's most famous for wanting to be able to download his consciousness into a computer and attain "virtual immortality".Having read more recent works, such as Theodore Roszack's critical study _The Cult of Information_, I can see that Moravec's ideas are just idle fantasy now...probably never realizable.David Brin also had some very sensitive, cautious words, which I deeply appreciated. I think this book was a rare convergence of librarians & SF writers in the time of the early 90s when Cyberpunk was all the rage (it's not dead yet, but it's not as BIG as it was then, either) and it was easy to be giddy about technology, etc.The internet was still young then.I think we've learned a great deal more and are much more realistic now than when the summary of this conference was put together in book form...This book is now pretty much a historical document more than it is anything useful for a 21st century contemporary reader. ... Read more

Book Description
Word count: 2141. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Futurist, published by World Future Society on July 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1174 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Beyond the conventional view of the human future: science-fiction author Bruce Sterling challenges conventional thinking of man's future relationships with commerce, technology, and nature in Tomorrow Now. (Book Review).
Author: Lane Jennings
Publication: The Futurist (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2003
Publisher: World Future Society
Volume: 37Issue: 4Page: 58(2)

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Artforum International, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2006. The length of the article is 2443 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Hot trends: Bruce Sterling on global warming in the glossies.(fashion magazines and environmentalism)
Author: Bruce Sterling
Publication: Artforum International (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 44Issue: 10Page: 145(3)

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Customer Reviews (1)

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air...
'All that is solid melts into air'... description of advanced capitalism by Marx.These words are a good description of how our media landscape transforms the meaning of anything... Arthur Kroker in his book and CD 'Spasm' give us the sound and insight into this 'meltdown' taking place all around us.Like Marshall McLuhan, Kroker asks "What haven't you noticed lately?" Kroker goes ahead and tells you, from biotechnology to music sampling, he hangs on a point of view - before it melts...

Bruce Sterling's introduction to Kroker's 'Spasm' is worth the price of admission alone, it's short, but sets the tone.

You will not always agree, but you will think, not many books or CDs that do that these days.Give Kroker a spin. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Not Free SF Reader
The problem with being addicted to a drug, is that if your source goes
away, you are in big trouble. This is exactly what happens to the main
character here. Even more of a problem, on their dust filled world is
that it is extremely hazardous to attempt a journey to find more of it.

This is what two drug fiends, a nutty captain and a crazy woman do, however.

Moby Dick Lives
There are only two Sterling books that I have liked.This is one of them.The other is Schismatrix.The plot obviously owes a debt to Moby Dick, but Sterling can be forgiven for that.The characters and setting are truly strange.Very few science fiction books succeed so elegantly.Don't let my mention of Moby Dick turn you away from reading this fun adventure with a cosmic ending.

The Involution Ocean - harder to get hold of than 'Flare'
This is a simple tale with a tight narrative focus.Being addicted to a rare drug has it's hazards.The main character's drug of choice, flare, is declared illegal so he and an inept junkie friend head out on a dust whaleship in a crater to extract flare from the source.

The characterisationis really very strong for such a short book. The characters are all verydifferent and their interaction is great.The plot is simple, but hangstogether extremely well. I found some of the descriptions of the alien lifeand the sensibilities of the locals and whalers really absorbing. There arequite a number of amusing little scenes in this book.(I think a few maybe unintentional).The setting is really fascinating and has a few wellchosen details that really add to the immersiveness of the book. I reallyenjoyed it!.

Wonderful, somber adventure
Sterling's first novel, written almost a decade before cyberpunk became a household word.
The setting is a desolate world with a single habitable crater, which is itself filled with a sea of near-fluid dust.This bleak, deadly place sets the tone for the story, which follows an addict trying to restablish a source for his drug of choice: "Flare," which is distilled from the oil of whale-like creatures which swim in the dust. He signs up for a berth on a whaling boat whose crew includes a captain obsessed with what lies beneath the dust seas, and an insane alien woman.
Somber, gripping, modestly awe-inspring.END ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Designfax, published by Nelson Publishing on August 1, 1999. The length of the article is 2472 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Excerpt from Heavy Weather.
Author: Bruce Sterling
Publication: Designfax (Magazine/Journal)
Date: August 1, 1999
Publisher: Nelson Publishing
Volume: 21Issue: 8Page: 41

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Book Description
Have you ever wondered if one day Windows 2028 might just know what you're thinking and type it? In this collection of essays, a selection of today's top media and sci-fi theorists weigh in. The Book of Imaginary Media explores the persistent idea that technology may one day succeed where no human has, not only in space or in nature, but also in interpersonal communication. Building on insights from media archeology, Siegfried Zielinski, Bruce Sterling, Erkki Huhtamo and Timothy Druckrey spin a web of associations between the fantasy machines of Athanasius Kircher, the mania of stereoscopy and "dead" media. Edwin Carels and Zoe Beloff descend into the cinematographic caverns of spiritualism and the iconography of death, and renowned cartoonists including Ben Katchor depict their own visionary media fantasies. On the enclosd DVD, artist Peter Blegvad provides hilarious commentary in a son et lumiere version of his On Imaginary Media. ... Read more

Amazon.com
A collaborative novel from the premier cyberpunk authors, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine takes us not forward but back, to an imagined 1885: the Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven, cybernetic engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (98)

Not Free SF Reader
Alternate computing history.


The novel looks at what happens to politics and society if Babbage's machines became used in common situations.

Throw political intrigue and espionage into the mix, and even with all this, the novel unfortunately still manages to be boring, as it appers to really suit neither author, at all.


2.5 out of 5

What the!?
Just finished TDE, and I'm at a loss what to make of it.The writing's terrific, the research behind it impressive.It's pretty ponderous going, though -- a veritable suffocation of language and imagery.TDE is pseudo-historical fiction of a uniquely ambitious and overblown sort.Despite the conceit of a Victorian England run on Babbage engines, TDE never quite convincingly depicts the world that might have been.The concept at the core of TDE is interesting, to be sure, but its execution leaves much to be desired.

A book that could have been, about a world that could have been
This is an alternative history book whose basic premise is: what if Charles Babbage's Engines, instead of being intriguing concepts but technical failures, had come to fruition? What could England have been with computerization, albeit steam-powered, by the mid-19th century?

This is a fascinating premise, but the book (despite its authors' well-deserved reputations) doesn't come through. It is a mostly-disconnected series of five stories (or "iterations;" how cute) with some overlapping characters. We see familiar names in unfamiliar positions, but except for two - what happened to the Duke of Wellington toward the end of his life and a brief comment about Byron by his widow in an epilogue - with no explanation, rhyme or reason. Within each story, characters move from one random event to another. There are too many Deus Ex Machinas: when some key characters are being fired upon, there just happens to be a pile of cotton bales to hide behind, and so on.

The book is also interrupted by one of the worst sex scenes I have ever had the misfortune to read. When the woman says "You'll come again, then?" as the man prepares to leave, you wonder when and how she'll return to the story later on to justify your having slogged through its 10+ pages (that's the whole episode, not just the sex proper) - but she doesn't. It's as if someone had told the authors "hey, guys, gotta have a sex scene" so they put one in, nearly at random, with no connection to anything else before or after.

Then there's a box of punched cards which everyone seems to want, but we don't know exactly why - and we don't particularly care, either. For that matter, while most of the main characters are reasonably likable, we don't really care that much about any of them either.

Finally, the prose is, charitably, often at the ninth-grade level. Try this: "This is no light matter, gentlemen! No lark for amateurs. This is dire work! We shall be taking the law, and our lives, and our honor, into our own hands. If it is to be done at all, it must be done in the strictest and most permanent secrecy." Believe it or not, this Tom Swiftian oration was put in the mouth of a 19th-century London policeman. Sorry. I don't think so. It's not that I don't like steampunk, but there is no rule that requires it to be badly written!

If you're a huge Gibson and/or Sterling and/or steampunk fan and can't sleep unless you've read everything else in that category, read this, but not for any other reason. If you're an alternative history buff, read all of Harry Turtledove's (and a few other folks') books first. If you're not any of those, save your time.

Just Awful
I'll give this book 2 stars only because of the premise, which was tantalizing. What science fiction or cyberpunk fan wouldn't want to read about an alternate history where the computer was invented 100 years before it should have been, turning London into the center of world power (complete with rampant pollution and dystopian overtones)?

Unfortunately, this book never truly delivers on that promise. Instead, we get a thoroughly confusing, monumentally boring walk through Victorian London, where all of the touchy-feelies of the day managed to worm their way into power.

As many people mentioned, I, too, had to force myself to finish this book. Oh, how it was painful. So slow, so badly written. Ugh. And again, as many people stated - I wanted to love it. I really did! In fact, every few years I'll pull out the book and read the last 2 pages (the ones that take place in 1991) just to see if my mind will grab something new. But it only continues to mystify and disappoint.

Resist the temptation to read this book. You'll get as much sci-fi from a 3 paragraph review on Amazon as you will in this 400+ page snooze-fest. And the reviews are more interesting to read.

Okay read, recommended for Steampunk fans.
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 Lost Children, or Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The comic medium does a great job with the juxtaposition of Victorian finery and industrial dystopia as well (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a great example). It's a visually rich subgenre, and The Difference Engine is an album of verbal photographs set in a noiresque thriller. It captures the spirit of steampunk well in all of its sooty, rusty, riveted glory.

The world of The Difference Engine can be thought of as a historical freethinker's wet dream. Lord Byron is prime minister, having successfully championed a meritocratic revolution that pushes science, rationalism and industry to the forefront. Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Huxley are all members of the House of Lords and Ada Lovelace (the world's first programmer) is the darling of this early information revolution powered by house-sized difference engines and littered with stacks of punch cards. In some ways, The Difference Engine is a big experimental playground in which the authors could drop their favorite authors and scientists into government and see what kind of society it produced.

That said, The Difference Engine is true to the '-punk' aspect. It is dystopic and gritty, in contrast with the positivist and high-mindedness (if all too Anglo- and male-centric) of most of its Victorian characters.

I was a little disappointed with the MacGuffinish character of the main object of attention in the story, but all in all, it was a good read. I recommend it to any fans of William Gibson and to anyone who gets excited at the mention of Jacquard looms, Babbage engines and kinetoscopes. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Designfax, published by Nelson Publishing on December 1, 1999. The length of the article is 4769 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: USER-CENTRIC.
Author: Bruce Sterling
Publication: Designfax (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 1999
Publisher: Nelson Publishing
Volume: 21Issue: 12Page: 30

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more