The Difference Engine

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View books by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling.

Great text book - Rated
Unfortunately dry.
This book is packed with great historical ideas and intriguing inventions, but so are many physics and history books. Sadly for this book many academic books have more accessible and enjoyable story arcs.

wasted effort - Rated
I found this book in John Clute's encyclopedia of Science fiction, as one of the classics of the 90's. I run to read it and was disappointed, like many other reviewers.
The plot gets lost: everything starts with some computer punch cards, but in the end nobody knows what those cards are, where they come from, why, etc...
The other parts of the plot suffer from this inconsistency: we get a wonderful description of victorian England, but all the time we keep waiting for a move, which doesn't come. Even the central part of the novel - the riots in smoke clouded London- are not coherently explained.
One is made believe that a conspirancy exists, but we don't know why or how.
Gibson and Sterling write well, but this is clearly not enough.

A book that shouldn't be written - Rated
It's always a pity to see a talented author suddenly to come out with an hopelessly weak title. You sometimes just wish that he had the guts NOT to write when he feels that it's just not going. Sadly, very few authors, including the best ones out there, avoid this temptation.

In this case, we have not one, but two widely acclaimed writers, who just got themselves in the same trap. The book is extremely weak, the plot is virtually (!) non-existent. The setting? the setting is hardly original, steam-punk motives were done many times before. And yet, there's nothing to this book, except the not-so-revolutionary idea of Victorian computers, and, of course, two best-selling names who just got their karma waaaay down.

It's a pity.

But only for the fantastic scene setting - Rated
Can't believe this book, I got totally engrossed in the background and atmosphere of a heady London where gaining information and the ability 'wipe' people was simply a case of punching the right holes. But where was the story? It might as well have been three short stories about London in the hey day of the Victorian Information Age. No intrigue, no coming together of three stories to a climactic ending, no coherance.

But then I picked up Count Zero just to remnd me how good William Gibson is. I have to say that I was also a bit dissapointed with Distraction which also left me hanging trrying to work out what the point of the whole story was. A good book never leaves you like that.

fans of Gibson's best work will be disappointed. - Rated
Seeing William Gibson's name on the cover, one might expect a brilliantly-envisioned world filled with fascinating technology. One might expect correctly, because that's just what you get. One might also expect an involving, exciting story which transcends the technical-manual style of inferior sci-fi authors. Here is where Gibson disappoints. he (and his co-author) seems to be so excited by the world he has created that he has decided to overlook the fact that the story - a typically gibsonian quest for AI self-awareness - doesn't really hang together.

It's a shame, because he really is the best in his field, but this is far from his best work. Fans of Gibson should buy this for the first half, which superbly evokes a Jules Verne-era information age, but not expect anything as cohesive or engrossing as 'Virtual Light'.