February 2018 Group Read - The Difference Engine

[Jo]

This is to discuss one of Feburary 2018's group reads, The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

I read this one a long, long time ago, probably the year it was first released. I remember not really liking it at the time but I don't remember a lot about it. If I recall, my chief complaint was the ponderously slow storyline and the dull, overly-descriptive prose that made reading the book a chore.

But I have to admit, being just out of high school, I probably did not have the proper frame of reference to completely understand a lot of the literary and historical references in the book, so I'm interested to hear what everyone thinks of it. It's a book that I've often thought about revisiting, although my experience with it was so poor the first time around that I never get too excited about another go-round. That, and the fact that Gibson's books seemed to go downhill around this time and I started to lose interest in him as an author.

I did read the Wikipedia summary to give myself a brief refresher course and I was surprised at how much research and work the authors obviously put into the setting and characters. If the internet had been around when I read the book the first time, and I'd been able to understand some of the references more, I wonder how it would have changed my experience?

[Buck]

I too am interested to see what others think of this book. The only other Gibson I've read is Neuromancer, perhaps his best known novel. I didn't dislike it but it didn't encourage me to read more Gibson.

[Cheryl]

I've got it from the library, going to start tonight.

[Radiantflux]

I just got a 2nd copy of SF Masterworks edition in the mail. Looking forward to reading it.

I liked Sperling and Gibson a lot in the 1990s, but haven't read any of their work since. I might try to catch up a bit with Sperling's more recent books afterwards.

[Ed]

Looking forward to it, but I've got a few others to get through first.

[Cheryl]

Welp. Turns out that even though it's both clever and smart, great world-building, etc., it just really truly is not my kind of book. Gave up p. 57 because I do not like thrillers, alternate history, or even steampunk. I'd rather go to outer space or to the lab of a mad scientist.... ;)

[Jo]

I don't normally read steampunk either so i'm trying to be open-minded. It's fairly readable but the plot is quite slow in developping. The one thing that is annoying me is the "victorian" dialogue, not sure if is really of the period or specially created for the book but either way it's distracting me.

[Radiantflux]

I finished it and am interested in what others thought.

Was I right in reading that the turning point for this future techno-utopia was essentially Bryon's wife allowing herself to be sodomized on her wedding night? Subsequently allowing her (through her husband) to achieve the reshaping of Victorian society into a hightech wonderland?

I don't know 19th C history well enough, but enjoyed the twists to famous people's lives. Keats becoming something like the equivalent of a website/power-point-presenter freelancer was particularly cool.

I've just read My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs so it was fun to read about same dinosaur in a very different reality.

Not super-impressed by the plot, which only seemed to exist all the reader to explore the alternative world. The recursive code is perhaps better understood if you were into the Strange Loop ideas of Hofstadter from the 1980s.

[Jo]

Radiantflux wrote: "I finished it and am interested in what others thought.

Was I right in reading that the turning point for this future techno-utopia was essentially Bryon's wife allowing herself to be sodomized o..."

Your description of the turning point did make me laugh, i've been slogging through part 1 with Sybil, 'prentice adventurer and Dandy Mick. Clearly the book is going to change direction at some point and for that I am grateful.

[Leo]

Having a hard time getting into the story....

[Oleksandr]

Just finished and I really liked it. It is notably better than a few samples of steampunk I tasted, for it is not a fantasy in age of steam, but cyberpunk with steam as the name implies. It made me think and I like when books do that. Yep, it is not an easy or fast read and maybe I am unable to appreciate it fully being non-native English speaker I understand what words mean but sometimes I may miss a stylization or intended in-joke. Thus I was surprised than many in this thread dropped it.

[Jo]

I'm still reading it, just not very quickly, i'm at 45% now. To be honest I really didn't like the first part but since then it has improved. I'm not a great fan of Gibson normally, so the fact i'm starting enjoy it, i'm putting down to the influence of Bruce Sterling.

[Ardis]

Cheryl wrote: "Welp. Turns out that even though it's both clever and smart, great world-building, etc., it just really truly is not my kind of book. Gave up p. 57 because I do not like thrillers, alternate histor..."

Cheryl, you're not alone in that! I actually ended up giving it up pretty early on as it's just not my genre, and I'm glad to find support for that here.

[Leo]

I read 80 p and still don't like it. Hope to reach a point where the story gets more interesting before I put it down.

[Radiantflux]

Oleksandr wrote: "Just finished and I really liked it. It is notably better than a few samples of steampunk I tasted, for it is not a fantasy in age of steam, but cyberpunk with steam as the name implies. It made me..."

Glad I am not the only one who finished it! I enjoyed it and glad it was on the list of books for this month.

[Ed]

I finally started it. I'm at page 100 now, i.e. at the start of "Iteration 3".

I am enjoying it, but it was hard going in places. The Victorian-era London slang was tough to deal with. And the lecture by Sam Houston went on way to long. But I'm still eager to continue.

The list of Best Steampunk Books here currently has books H.G. Wells and Jules Verne in positions 5 and 6. That feels weird to me. Steampunk sometimes imitates those works, but I can't bring myself to apply that term to those originals.

[Leo]

Half way now and passed the point of no return. It took me a very long time before I started to enjoy it a bit. Had a hard time to understand the language, the tech and the circumstances.
I'm wondering how it works btw, two writers writing one book together. One has the ideas, the other does the writing? Taking turns in writing the chapters? Discussing every sentence?

[Ed]

Leo wrote: "I'm wondering how it works btw, two writers writing one book together...."

That always confuses me, too! I read an essay by Neil Gaiman where he says that for Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch he can no longer remember which parts he wrote and which parts Terry Pratchett wrote.

[Leo]

Ed wrote: "....he can no longer remember which parts he wrote and which parts Terry Pratchett wrote."
Amazing. That means they must have worked really close together through the whole book. While every writer has his own style, doesn't that mean making compromises the whole time? I cannot imagine how that must be.

[Cheryl]

In the anniversary edition that I tried to read, there is an introduction that briefly addresses issues of collaboration.

[Buck]

My impression has always been that the famous author provides the name recognition and the lesser known author does the work. That wouldn't be the case with Gaiman and Pratchett.

[Ed]

Buck wrote: "My impression has always been that the famous author provides the name recognition and the lesser known author does the work. That wouldn't be the case with Gaiman and Pratchett."

Gaiman was pretty much unknown in 1990. But it seems to have been a real collaboration. The wikipedia page for that book has quotes from both of them about how the collaboration worked.

I write software, and that is almost always collaborative to some extent. But a collaborative novel still seems weird to me.

Anyway, continuing on with Difference Engine.... I hope I don't spoil anything by mentioning that they have a character using a pencil with an attached eraser even though this is supposed to be 1855. That wasn't patented until 1858! Darn anachronisms! 😉 (Yes, I know this is an alternate timeline. That detail just felt weird to me so I looked it up.)

[Oleksandr]

Cheryl wrote: "In the anniversary edition that I tried to read, there is an introduction that briefly addresses issues of collaboration."
And there is an Afterword with more info. I guess I may quote it w/o violating copyright laws (it is just a snippet):
In the run-up to the decision to write the book together, we each spoke as though the other would be writing it. It finally came to an actual “ ‘no, you write it,’ ‘no, you’ ” moment.
Bruce immediately proposed a protocol of collaboration that I still regard as having been essential. The text was to be considered to be the contents of the latest iteration, on what eventually became a thick and slippery stack of floppies. Either of us could change anything there at any time, but only by writing over the current version. We were specifically disallowed the option of pasting in some previous favorite text. If we wanted to restore some prior material, we could work only from memory. This last rule, I think, was crucial, though you’d have to try it yourself to see why.
We constantly overwrote everything: ourselves, each other, the hods of actual Victorian print media Bruce hauled home from the University of Texas. The result is a text that couldn’t have been produced without word processing.

[Leo]

Ed wrote: "they have a character using a pencil with an attached eraser even though this is supposed to be 1855. That wasn't patented until 1858! "
Great research Ed!

[Leo]

Oleksandr wrote:
And there is an Afterword with more info. I guess I may quo..."

My copy doesn't contain this information, thanks for sharing.

[Oleksandr]

Ed wrote: "Darn anachronisms! ."

There are too many, so I got it was intended this way: in 1855 there is a civil war in the USA, French already finished Suez Canal, Indian Rebellion of 1857 etc. In the Crimean war here Odessa was captured, etc.

[Ed]

Oleksandr wrote: "Ed wrote: "Darn anachronisms! ."

There are too many, so I got it was intended this way..."

Yes, of course. It is alternate history, so there are many anachronisms. I just got curious about the pencil eraser thing and started wondering when it was really invented. The curse of the internet is that when I have a question like that, I simply must investigate!

I am not going to investigate whether mummies were burned for fuel during the construction of the Suez canal because I don't want to know.

[Ed]

I'm curious whether any of you have also read The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer. Another alternate history story based around the Difference Engine.

[Jim]

Ed wrote: "I'm curious whether any of you have also read The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer. Another alternate history story based ..."

I've only read a couple of nonfiction histories that mention them in the history of computing.

[Leo]

I ended up with 2 stars, mainly for the writing and some intriguing parts. I think I missed out a lot of points, for example what it was all about this box with french cards... A second read would probably help but I don't think that's going to happen.

[Oleksandr]

Leo wrote: "what it was all about this box with french cards... "

You can see it like an unnamed treasure in Pulp Fiction, the knowledge doesn't affect the story much.
It contained (view spoiler)[ a program that proves that there is no finite number of axioms (it is a real groundbreaking work in math), but thieves thought it contains algorithm for a sure win in gambling - source of infinite riches (hide spoiler)]

[Leo]

Oleksandr wrote: You can see it like an unnamed treasure in Pulp Fiction, the knowledge doesn't affect the story much."
True. Thanks. I blame my lack of interest in subjects (math...) and circumstances (names, places and science of that era) for missing such things in the book.

[Ed]

I enjoyed the first three sections. But then got distracted by reading other things. I don't feel any great compulsion to go back and finish it. There are just many other books that are more compelling to me.