The Tory Party and hereditary peerage are eclipsed, and British trade unions assist in the ascendancy of the Industrial Radical Party (much as they aided the Labour Party of Great Britain in the twentieth century in our own world). The Industrial Radical Party, led by a Lord Byron who survives the Greek War of Independence, comes to power.

Although Wellington stages a coup d'état in 1830 in an attempt to overturn his defeat and prevent the acceleration of technological change and social upheaval, he is assassinated in 1831. He becomes politically powerful and at the 1830 general election successfully opposes the Tory Government of the Duke of Wellington. The fictional historical background diverges from our timeline around 1824, at which point Charles Babbage completes his Difference Engine and proceeds to develop an Analytical Engine. Campbell Memorial Award and the Prix Aurora Award in 1992. The novel was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award in 1990, the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1991, and both the John W. It posits a Victorian era Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer (actually his Analytical Engine rather than the difference engine).

It is widely regarded as a book that helped establish the genre conventions of steampunk. 75,000 first printing $75,000 ad/promo.The Difference Engine (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. A sometimes listless pace and limp conclusions that defy the plot's complexity flaw an otherwise visionary, handsomely written, unsentimental tale that convincingly revises the 19th-century Western world. Mallory, who knows the cards are a gambling device that can be read with a specialized Engine, is soon threatened and libeled by the Luddites, and he and his associates confront the scoundrels in a violent showdown. Much of the problem centers on a set of perforated cards, once in the possession of an executed Luddite leader's daughter, later in the hands of ``Queen of Engines'' Ada Byron (daughter of prime minister Lord Byron), finally given to Edward Mallory, a scientist. Fierce summer heat and pollution have driven out the ruling class, and ensuing anarchy allows the subversive, technology-hating Luddites to surface and battle the intellectual elite. In a surprising departure from the traditional view of cyberpunk's bleak future, Gibson ( Mona Lisa Overdrive ) and Sterling ( Islands in the Net ) render with elan and colorful detail a scientifically advanced London, circa 1855, where computers (``Engines'') have been developed.

The difference engine novel