History Literature / TheDifferenceEngine

''The Difference Engine'' is a 1990 {{alternate history}} novel written collaboratively by Creator/WilliamGibson and Creator/BruceSterling. It is a prime example of the {{steampunk}} sub-genre, often considered the GenrePopularizer.

* WitchHunt: The hunt for 'Luddite conspirators' by Charles Egremont.

* CallARabbitASmeerp: To emphasize the alternate history setting, many real-life terms are replaced with similar words using different roots. Hackers are called "clackers." Movie projectors are called "kinotropes." Communists are called Communards. Aerodynamics is called pneumodynamics. etc.

* CoitusEnsues: Mallory abruptly has a romantic fling with Hetty, going so far as to abandon the recently injured Ebenezer Fraser to do so. [[spoiler:This detour is largely why he gets trapped in London in the wake of the riots.]]

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** During the London riots, Mallory sees a team of steam-engines of Crimean War fame pulling artillery guns. In RealLife, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_engine the traction engine]] had already been in production for farm and circus caravan use by the 1850s, it would have been trivial to adapt them to pull guns and [[http://steamtraction.farmcollector.com/multimedia/image-gallery.aspx?id=42364&seq=7 at least one of them operated in Crimea]].
** Scheduled steam carriage services existed for a brief period in the 1820s and 1830s until the Turnpike and Red Flag Acts effectively quashed them in favor of horse-drawn wagons and railroads.
** The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink Great Stink]] also took place in real life, just three years later and minus the riots.
** Edo Japan possessed clockwork dolls known as ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karakuri_puppet karakuri]]'' (albeit not as sophisticated as the Engine-driven one in the book).

* RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman: Lord Byron is Prime Minister. Charles Babbage is another powerful politician. UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli is most famous for his romance novels (he [[AluminumChristmasTrees did write a couple]] in RealLife, including ''Sybil'' from which the Sybil Gerard/Charles Egremont storyline is taken). Creator/JohnKeats is a "kinotrope" artist. Coleridge and Wordsworth are business partners. William Colgate is a lord. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Vallandigham Clement Vallandigham,]] an Ohio politician and notorious Copperhead (anti-Civil War Democrat) who plotted to start a "Northwest Confederacy" of the Ohio River Valley states, is President of the rump USA.

* AwesomeMcCoolName: Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, so named after the dinosaur he discovered. He doesn't much like the nickname.

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Kind of. Lord and Lady Byron have BDSM sessions and so on, while Mallory and Hetty had a very romantic night. On the other hand, Mallory's night with a Native American widow is very much FanDisservice, for himself included.

* ShownTheirWork

* AlternateHistoryWank: Although the Engines and associated steam technologies needed [[UpToEleven a stronger version of the then nascent British industry]] to work, the history of the rest of the world is accelerated as through magic, with subtle hints at the 20th century developments:

* OldTimeyAnkleTaboo: Hetty lifts her skirt to show her ankles when Mallory asks; it's treated the same way as a panty shot.

* OldTimeyAnkleTaboo: Hetty lifts her skirt to show her ankles when Mallory asks; it's treated the same way as a PantyShot.

* YeGoodeOldeDays: cross with JiveTurkey: only "Dandy Mick" and Sybil use [[PurpleProse the flowery language of the early-Victorian times]], known to the modern public from period literature and the speeches of UsefulNotes/WilliamGladstone and his peers. Mallory, most male characters from Engine-punchers to lowly workers, ''Disraeli himself'' use a language similar to that of modern men.

* DirtyCommies: The Manhattan Commune, led by no one else but Karl Marx

** "Sand-hog" for underground construction worker is an ''American'' slang word first heard in the ''1870s''.

* ManBehindTheMan: Lord Byron, dashing hero and exceptional public speaker, is uncovered in the appendices after his death as a rather incompetent administrator, pushed and manipulated in political decision by Lady Annabella Byron, who rants on having to endure "his beastly habits" for decades. Victorian Age [[NoWomansLand being what it was]] the position brought little profit to her.

* RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman: Lord Byron is Prime Minister. Charles Babbage is another powerful politician. UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli is most famous for his romance novels (he [[AluminumChristmasTrees did write a couple]] in RealLife, including ''Sybil'' from which the Sybil Gerard/Charles Egremont storyline is taken). Creator/JohnKeats is a "kinotrope" artist. Coleridge and Wordsworth are business partners. William Colgate is a lord. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Vallandigham Clement Vallandigham,]] an Ohio politician and notorious Copperhead (anti-Civil War Democrat) who plotted to start a "Northwest Confederacy" of the Ohio River Valley states, is President of the much-reduced USA.

* SchizoTech: Played [[RealityIsUnrealistic realistically]]. Tom and Brian Mallory built a racing steam-car in the shape of [[TheThirties the 1930s]] streamlined racing cars, but due to the huge fuel consumption of steam engines they needed to take a coal wagon in tow to drive from Sussex to London. Even the most primitive gasoline engines in RealLife only took a couple of gallons of fuel for the same route.

* GenreDeconstruction: the original concept was to see how {{Cyberpunk}} themes would work in a historical setting.

* PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy: The Japanese quartet love everything western so much they want to get rid of the Japanese language.

* DirtyCommies: The Manhattan Commune, lead by no one else but Karl Marx

* AwesomeMcCoolname: Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, so named after the dinosaur he discovered. He doesn't much like the nickname.

* {{Fanservice}}: in-story. The clock Mallory buys has an allegoric depiction of Science, Progress and Britain. The latter is, for some reason, wearing almost nothing. Other examples include the Americans' theater and the artists on Montmartre (described as "dressed... erm, undressed similarly to each other").

* FootnoteFever: to let the average writer read the book properly without wondering "Who the hell ''are'' those people?!"

* OldTimeyAnkleTaboo: Hetty lifts her skirt to show her ankles when Mallory asks; it's treated the same way as a PantyFlash.

* GenrePopularizer: SteamPunk

* RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman: Lord Byron is Prime Minister. Charles Babbage is another powerful politician. UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli is most famous for his romance novels (he [[AluminumChristmasTrees did write a couple]] in RealLife, including ''Sybil'' from which the Sybil Gerard/Charles Egremont storyline is taken). Creator/JohnKeats is a "kinotrope" artist. Coleridge and Wordsworth are business partners. William Colgate is a lord. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Vallandigham Clement Vallandigham]], an Ohio politician and notorious Copperhead (anti-Civil War Democrat) who plotted to start a "Northwest Confederacy" of the Ohio River Valley states, is President of the much-reduced USA.

* ShowSomeLeg: Hetty also lifts her skirt to show her ankles when Mallory asks.

It posits a {{Victorian Britain}} ''ca.'' 1855 in which a great wave of 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 titular Difference Engine). Among the many various changes that arise as a result of this innovation are an even more powerful [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire British Empire]], a DividedStatesOfAmerica, an early Communist Revolution in Manhattan led by Karl Marx himself, steam-powered gurneys (this timeline's equivalent of cars), and the premature invention of "camphorated cellulose" (aka celluloid - the first thermoplastic).

* ScienceMarchesOn / TechnologyMarchesOn: Many examples in-story.

The story follows Sybil Gerard, a political courtesan and daughter of an executed Luddite leader (she is borrowed from Creator/BenjaminDisraeli's novel ''Sybil''); Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, a [[AdventurerArchaeologist paleontologist and explorer]] who comes into a lot of money thanks to a good bet on an advanced steam gurney model; and Laurence Oliphant, a historical figure with a real career, as portrayed in the book, as a travel writer whose [[CovertGroupWithMundaneFront work was a cover for espionage activities]] "undertaken in the service of Her Majesty".

* RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman: Lord Byron is Prime Minister. Charles Babbage is another powerful politician. Creator/BenjaminDisraeli is most famous for his romance novels (he [[AluminumChristmasTrees did write a couple]] in RealLife, including ''Sybil'' from which the Sybil Gerard/Charles Egremont storyline is taken). Creator/JohnKeats is a "kinotrope" artist. Coleridge and Wordsworth are business partners. William Colgate is a lord. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Vallandigham Clement Vallandigham]], an Ohio politician and notorious Copperhead (anti-Civil War Democrat) who plotted to start a "Northwest Confederacy" of the Ohio River Valley states, is President of the much-reduced USA.