The Difference Engine: A Novel by William Gibson (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Difference Engine by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling In 1855, 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. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description The 20th anniversary edition of the classic steampunk novel With new commentary by the authors 1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine, and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. Three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with the future: Sybil Gerard—fallen woman, politicians tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator; Edward "Leviathan" Mallory—explorer and paleontologist; Laurence Oliphant—diplomat, mystic, and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for.Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine took the science fiction community by storm when it was first published twenty years ago. This special anniversary edition features an Introduction by Cory Doctorow and a collaborative essay from the authors looking back on their creation. Provocative, compelling, intensely imagined, this novel is poised to impress a whole new generation. Author Biography William Gibson is credited with having coined the term "cyberspace" and having envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality before either existed. He is the author of Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrows Parties, Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, Zero History, Distrust That Particular Flavor, and The Peripheral. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife. Bruce Sterling is an Austin-born science fiction writer and Net critic, internationally recognized as a cyberspace theorist who is also considered one of the forefathers of the cyberpunk movement in science fiction. He has won a John W. Campbell Award, two Hugo Awards, and an Arthur C. Clarke Award. Review "Breathtaking."—The New York Times Book Review"Smartly plotted, wonderfully crafted, and written with sly literary wit . . . spins marvelously and runs like a dream."—Entertainment Weekly "Splendid . . . highly imaginative."—Chicago Tribune "A ripping adventure yarn."—Los Angeles Times "[A] tour-de-force."—The Philadelphia Inquirer Review Quote "Breathtaking."-- The New York Times Book Review "Smartly plotted, wonderfully crafted, and written with sly literary wit . . . spins marvelously and runs like a dream."-- Entertainment Weekly Excerpt from Book First Iteration The Angel of Goliad Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, October 14, 1905. A villa, a garden, a balcony. Erase the balconys wrought-iron curves, exposing a bath-chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from the nickel-plate of the chairs wheel-spokes. The occupant, owner of the villa, rests her arthritic hands upon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom. These hands consist of tendons, tissue, jointed bone. Through quiet processes of time and information, threads within the human cells have woven themselves into a woman. Her name is Sybil Gerard. Below her, in a neglected formal garden, leafless vines lace wooden trellises on whitewashed, flaking walls. From the open windows of her sickroom, a warm draft stirs the loose white hair at her neck, bringing scents of coal-smoke, jasmine, opium. Her attention is fixed upon the sky, upon a silhouette of vast and irresistible grace--metal, in her lifetime, having taught itself to fly. In advance of that magnificence, tiny unmanned aeroplanes dip and skirl against the red horizon. Like starlings, Sybil thinks. The airships lights, square golden windows, hint at human warmth. Effortlessly, with the incomparable grace of organic function, she imagines a distant music there, the music of London: the passengers promenade, they drink, they flirt, perhaps they dance. Thoughts come unbidden, the mind weaving its perspectives, assembling meaning from emotion and memory. She recalls her life in London. Recalls herself, so long ago, making her way along the Strand, pressing past the crush at Temple Bar. Pressing on, the city of Memory winding itself about her--till, by the walls on Newgate, the shadow of her fathers hanging falls . . . And Memory turns, deflected swift as light, down another byway--one where it is always evening. . . . It is January 15, 1855. A room in Grands Hotel, Piccadilly. One chair was propped backward, wedged securely beneath the doors cut-glass knob. Another was draped with clothing: a womans fringed mantelet, a mud-crusted skirt of heavy worsted, a mans checked trousers and cutaway coat. Two forms lay beneath the bedclothes of the laminated-maple four-poster, and off in the iron grip of winter Big Ben bellowed ten oclock, great hoarse calliope sounds, the coal-fired breath of London. Sybil slid her feet through icy linens to the warmth of the ceramic bottle in its wrap of flannel. Her toes brushed his shin. The touch seemed to start him from deep deliberation. That was how he was, this Dandy Mick Radley. Shed met Mick Radley at Laurents Dancing Academy, down Windmill Street. Now that she knew him, he seemed more the sort for Kellners in Leicester Square, or even the Portland Rooms. He was always thinking, scheming, muttering over something in his head. Clever, clever. It worried her. And Mrs. Winterhalter wouldnt have approved, for the handling of "political gentlemen" required delicacy and discretion, qualities Mrs. Winterhalter believed she herself had aplenty, while crediting none to her girls. "No more dollymopping, Sybil," Mick said. One of his pronouncements, something about which hed made up his clever mind. Sybil grinned up at him, her face half-hidden by the blankets warm edge. She knew he liked the grin. Her wicked-girl grin. He cant mean that, she thought. Make a joke of it, she told herself. "But if I werent a wicked dollymop, would I be here with you now?" "No more playing bobtail." "You know I only go with gentlemen." Mick sniffed, amused. "Call me a gentleman, then?" "A very flash gentleman," Sybil said, flattering him. "One of the fancy. You know I dont care for the Rad Lords. I spit on em, Mick." Sybil shivered, but not unhappily, for shed run into a good bit of luck here, full of steak-and-taters and hot chocolate, in bed between clean sheets in a fashionable hotel. A shiny new hotel with central steam-heat, though shed gladly have traded the restless gurgling and banging of the scrolled gilt radiator for the glow of a well-banked hearth. And he was a good-looking cove, this Mick Radley, she had to admit, dressed very flash, had the tin and was generous with it, and hed yet to demand anything peculiar or beastly. She knew it wouldnt last, as Mick was a touring gent from Manchester, and gone soon enough. But there was profit in him, and maybe more when he left her, if she made him feel sorry about it, and generous. Mick reclined into fat feather-pillows and slid his manicured fingers behind his spit-curled head. Silk nightshirt all frothy with lace down the front--only the best for Mick. Now he seemed to want to talk a bit. Men did, usually, after a while--about their wives, mostly. But for Dandy Mick, it was always politics. "So, you hate the Lordships, Sybil?" "Why shouldnt I?" Sybil said. "I have my reasons." "I should say you do," Mick said slowly, and the look he gave her then, of cool superiority, sent a shiver through her. "What dye mean by that, Mick?" "I know your reasons for hating the Government. I have your number." Surprise seeped into her, then fear. She sat up in bed. There was a taste in her mouth like cold iron. "You keep your card in your bag," he said. "I took that number to a rum magistrate I know. He ran it through a government Engine for me, and printed up your Bow Street file, rat-a-tat-tat, like fun." He smirked. "So I know all about you, girl. Know who you are . . ." She tried to put a bold face on it. "And whos that, then, Mr. Radley?" "No Sybil Jones, dearie. Youre Sybil Gerard, the daughter of Walter Gerard, the Luddite agitator." Hed raided her hidden past. Machines, whirring somewhere, spinning out history. Now Mick watched her face, smiling at what he saw there, and she recognized a look shed seen before, at Laurents, when first hed spied her across the crowded floor. A hungry look. Her voice shook. "How long have you known about me?" "Since our second night. You know I travel with the General. Like any important man, he has enemies. As his secretary and man-of-affairs, I take few chances with strangers." Mick put his cruel, deft little hand on her shoulder. "You might have been someones agent. It was business." Sybil flinched away. "Spying on a helpless girl," she said at last. "Youre a right bastard, you are!" But her foul words scarcely seemed to touch him--he was cold and hard, like a judge or a lordship. "I may spy, girl, but I use the Governments machinery for my own sweet purposes. Im no coppers nark, to look down my nose at a revolutionary like Walter Gerard--no matter what the Rad Lords may call him now. Your father was a hero." He shifted on the pillow. "My hero--that was Walter Gerard. I saw him speak, on the Rights of Labour, in Manchester. He was a marvel--we all cheered till our throats was raw! The good old Hell-Cats . . ." Micks smooth voice had gone sharp and flat, in a Mancunian tang. "Ever hear tell of the Hell-Cats, Sybil? In the old days?" "A street-gang," Sybil said. "Rough boys in Manchester." Mick frowned. "We was a brotherhood! A friendship youth-guild! Your father knew us well. He was our patron politician, you might say." "Id prefer it if you didnt speak of my father, Mr. Radley." Mick shook his head at her impatiently. "When I heard theyd tried and hanged him"--the words like ice behind her ribs--"me and the lads, we took up torches and crowbars, and we ran hot and wild. . . . That was Ned Ludds work, girl! Years ago . . ." He picked delicately at the front of his nightshirt. " Tis not a tale I tell to many. The Governments Engines have long memories." She understood it now--Micks generosity and his sweet-talk, the strange hints hed aimed at her, of secret plans and better fortune, marked cards and hidden aces. He was pulling her strings, making her his creature. The daughter of Walter Gerard was a fancy prize, for a man like Mick. She pulled herself out of bed, stepping across icy floorboards in her pantalettes and chemise. She dug quickly, silently, through the heap of her clothing. The fringed mantelet, the jacket, the great sagging cage of her crinoline skirt. The jingling white cuirass of her corset. "Get back in bed," Mick said lazily. "Dont get your monkey up. Tis cold out there." He shook his head. " Tis not like you think, Sybil." She refused to look at him, struggling into her corset by the window, where frost-caked glass cut the upwashed glare of gaslight from the street. She cinched the corsets laces tight across her back with a quick practiced snap of her wrists. "Or if it is," Mick mused, watching her, " tis only in small degree." Across the street, the opera had let out--gentry in their cloaks and top-hats. Cab-horses, their backs in blankets, stamped and shivered on the black macadam. White traces of clean suburban snow still clung to the gleaming coachwork of some lordships steam-gurney. Tarts were working the crowd. Poor wretched souls. Hard indeed to find a kind face amid those goffered shirts and diamond studs, on such a cold night. Sybil turned toward Mick, confused, angry, and very Details ISBN0440423627 Author Bruce Sterling Short Title DIFFERENCE ENGINE Language English ISBN-10 0440423627 ISBN-13 9780440423621 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2011 Publication Date 2011-07-26 Imprint Spectra Subtitle A Novel AU Release Date 2011-07-26 NZ Release Date 2011-07-26 US Release Date 2011-07-26 UK Release Date 2011-07-26 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United Kingdom Pages 512 Publisher Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc DEWEY 813 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:43659577;

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