![]() ![]() ![]() Adventurer Archaeologist: Mallory is a Gentleman Adventurer Archaeologist.Tropes used in The Difference Engine include: ![]() Linking all their stories is the trail of a mysterious set of reportedly very powerful computer punch cards and the individuals fighting to obtain them as is the case with special objects in several novels by Gibson, the punch cards are to some extent a MacGuffin. The story follows Sybil Gerard, a political courtesan and daughter of an executed Luddite leader (she is borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli's novel Sybil) Edward "Leviathan" Mallory, a paleontologist and explorer and Laurence Oliphant, a historical figure with a real career, as portrayed in the book, as a travel writer whose work was a cover for espionage activities "undertaken in the service of Her Majesty". It posits a Victorian 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 a prime example of the Steampunk sub-genre. The Difference Engine is an Alternate History novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. ![]()
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