{"product_id":"the-difference-engine-isbn-9780440423621","title":"The Difference Engine","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe 20th anniversary edition of the classic steampunk novel \u003cbr\u003eWith new commentary by the authors\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e1855: 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, politician’s 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart detective story, part historical thriller, \u003ci\u003eThe Difference Engine\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e“Breathtaking.”—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Smartly plotted, wonderfully crafted, and written with sly literary wit . . . spins marvelously and runs like a dream.”—\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Splendid . . . highly imaginative.”—\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“A ripping adventure yarn.”—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“[A] tour-de-force.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eWilliam Gibson\u003c\/b\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eNeuromancer\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCount Zero\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMona Lisa Overdrive\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBurning Chrome\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eVirtual Light\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eIdoru\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAll Tomorrow's Parties\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePattern Recognition\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSpook Country\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eZero History\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eDistrust That Particular Flavor\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Peripheral\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBruce Sterling \u003c\/b\u003eis 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.First Iteration\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Angel of Goliad\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComposite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, October 14, 1905.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA villa, a garden, a balcony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eErase the balcony’s wrought-iron curves, exposing a bath-chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from the nickel-plate of the chair’s wheel-spokes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe occupant, owner of the villa, rests her arthritic hands upon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer name is Sybil Gerard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBelow 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike starlings, Sybil thinks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe airship’s 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThoughts come unbidden, the mind weaving its perspectives, assembling meaning from emotion and memory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe 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 father’s hanging falls . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd Memory turns, deflected swift as light, down another byway--one where it is always evening. . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is January 15, 1855.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA room in Grand’s Hotel, Piccadilly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne chair was propped backward, wedged securely beneath the door’s cut-glass knob. Another was draped with clothing: a woman’s fringed mantelet, a mud-crusted skirt of heavy worsted, a man’s checked trousers and cutaway coat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo forms lay beneath the bedclothes of the laminated-maple four-poster, and off in the iron grip of winter Big Ben bellowed ten o’clock, great hoarse calliope sounds, the coal-fired breath of London.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe’d met Mick Radley at Laurent’s Dancing Academy, down Windmill Street. Now that she knew him, he seemed more the sort for Kellner’s 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 wouldn’t have approved, for the handling of “political gentlemen” required delicacy and discretion, qualities Mrs. Winterhalter believed she herself had a‑plenty, while crediting none to her girls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No more dollymopping, Sybil,” Mick said. One of his pronouncements, something about which he’d made up his clever mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil grinned up at him, her face half-hidden by the blanket’s warm edge. She knew he liked the grin. Her wicked-girl grin. He can’t mean that, she thought. Make a joke of it, she told herself. “But if I weren’t a wicked dollymop, would I be here with you now?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No more playing bobtail.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You know I only go with gentlemen.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMick sniffed, amused. “Call me a gentleman, then?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A very flash gentleman,” Sybil said, flattering him. “One of the fancy. You know I don’t care for the Rad Lords. I spit on ’em, Mick.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil shivered, but not unhappily, for she’d 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 she’d gladly have traded the restless gurgling and banging of the scrolled gilt radiator for the glow of a well-banked hearth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd 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 he’d yet to demand anything peculiar or beastly. She knew it wouldn’t 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMick 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut for Dandy Mick, it was always politics. “So, you hate the Lordships, Sybil?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Why shouldn’t I?” Sybil said. “I have my reasons.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I should say you do,” Mick said slowly, and the look he gave her then, of cool superiority, sent a shiver through her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What d’ye mean by that, Mick?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I know your reasons for hating the Government. I have your number.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSurprise seeped into her, then fear. She sat up in bed. There was a taste in her mouth like cold iron.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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 . . .”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe tried to put a bold face on it. “And who’s that, then, Mr. Radley?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No Sybil Jones, dearie. You’re Sybil Gerard, the daughter of Walter Gerard, the Luddite agitator.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe’d raided her hidden past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMachines, whirring somewhere, spinning out history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow Mick watched her face, smiling at what he saw there, and she recognized a look she’d seen before, at Laurent’s, when first he’d spied her across the crowded floor. A hungry look.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer voice shook. “How long have you known about me?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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 someone’s agent. It was business.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil flinched away. “Spying on a helpless girl,” she said at last. “You’re a right bastard, you are!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut 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 Government’s machinery for my own sweet purposes. I’m no copper’s 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.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe 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 . . .” Mick’s smooth voice had gone sharp and flat, in a Mancunian tang. “Ever hear tell of the Hell-Cats, Sybil? In the old days?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A street-gang,” Sybil said. “Rough boys in Manchester.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMick frowned. “We was a brotherhood! A friendship youth-guild! Your father knew us well. He was our patron politician, you might say.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I’d prefer it if you didn’t speak of my father, Mr. Radley.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMick shook his head at her impatiently. “When I heard they’d 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 Ludd’s work, girl! Years ago . . .” He picked delicately at the front of his nightshirt. “ ’Tis not a tale I tell to many. The Government’s Engines have long memories.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe understood it now--Mick’s generosity and his sweet-talk, the strange hints he’d 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe pulled herself out of bed, stepping across icy floorboards in her pantalettes and chemise.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Get back in bed,” Mick said lazily. “Don’t get your monkey up. ’Tis cold out there.” He shook his head. “ ’Tis not like you think, Sybil.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe 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 corset’s laces tight across her back with a quick practiced snap of her wrists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Or if it is,” Mick mused, watching her, “ ’tis only in small degree.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcross 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 lordship’s 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 much afraid. “Who did you tell about me?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Not a living soul,” Mick said, “not even my friend the General. And I won’t be peaching on you. Nobody’s ever said Mick Radley’s indiscreet. So get back in bed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I shan’t,” Sybil said, standing straight, her bare feet freezing on the floorboards. “Sybil Jones may share your bed--but the daughter of Walter Gerard is a personage of substance!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMick blinked at her, surprised. He thought it over, rubbing his narrow chin, then nodded. “ ’Tis my sad loss, then, Miss Gerard.” He sat up in bed and pointed at the door, with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “Put on your skirt, then, and your brass-heeled dolly-boots, Miss Gerard, and out the door with you and your substance. But ’twould be a great shame if you left. I’ve uses for a clever girl.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I should say you do, you blackguard,” said Sybil, but she hesitated. He had another card to play--she could sense it in the set of his face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe grinned at her, his eyes slitted. “Have you ever been to Paris, Sybil?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Paris?” Her breath clouded in midair.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yes,” he said, “the gay and the glamorous, next destination for the General, when his London lecture tour is done.” Dandy Mick plucked at his lace cuffs. “What those uses are, that I mentioned, I shan’t as yet say. But the General is a man of deep stratagem. And the Government of France have certain difficulties that require the help of experts. . . .” He leered triumphantly. “But I can see that I bore you, eh?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil shifted from foot to foot. “You’ll take me to Paris, Mick,” she said slowly, “and that’s the true bill, no snicky humbugging?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Strictly square and level. If you don’t believe me, I’ve a ticket in my coat for the Dover ferry.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil walked to the brocade armchair in the corner, and tugged at Mick’s greatcoat. She shivered uncontrollably, and slipped the greatcoat on. Fine dark wool, like being wrapped in warm money.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Try the right front pocket,” Mick told her. “The card-case.” He was amused and confident--as if it were funny that she didn’t trust him. Sybil thrust her chilled hands into both pockets. Deep, plush-lined . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer left hand gripped a lump of hard cold metal. She drew out a nasty little pepperbox derringer. Ivory handle, intricate gleam of steel hammers and brass cartridges, small as her hand but heavy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Naughty,” said Mick, frowning. “Put it back, there’s a girl.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil put the thing away, gently but quickly, as if it were a live crab. In the other pocket she found his card-case, red morocco leather; inside were business cards, cartes-de-visite with his Engine-stippled portrait, a London train timetable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd an engraved slip of stiff creamy parchment, first-class passage on the Newcomen, out of Dover.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You’ll need two tickets, then,” she hesitated, “if you really mean to take me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMick nodded, conceding the point. “And another for the train from Cherbourg, too. And nothing simpler. I can wire for tickets, downstairs at the lobby desk.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil shivered again, and wrapped the coat closer. Mick laughed at her. “Don’t give me that vinegar phiz. You’re still thinking like a dollymop; stop it. Start thinking flash, or you’ll be of no use to me. You’re Mick’s gal now--a high-flyer.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe spoke slowly, reluctantly. “I’ve never been with any man who knew I was Sybil Gerard.” That was a lie, of course--there was Egremont, the man who had ruined her. Charles Egremont had known very well who she was. But Egremont no longer mattered--he lived in a different world, now, with his po-faced respectable wife, and his respectable children, and his respectable seat in Parliament.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd Sybil hadn’t been dollymopping, with Egremont. Not exactly, anyway. A matter of degree. . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe could tell that Mick was pleased at the lie she’d told him. It had flattered him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMick opened a gleaming cigar-case, extracted a cheroot, and lit it in the oily flare of a repeating match, filling the room with the candied smell of cherry tobacco.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“So now you feel a bit shy with me, do you?” he said at last. “Well, I prefer it that way. What I know, that gives me a bit more grip on you, don’t it, than mere tin.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis eyes narrowed. “It’s what a cove knows that counts, ain’t it, Sybil? More than land or money, more than birth. Information. Very flash.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSybil felt a moment of hatred for him, for his ease and confidence. Pure resentment, sharp and primal, but she crushed her feelings down. The hatred wavered, losing its purity, turning to shame. She did hate him--but only because he truly knew her. He knew how far Sybil Gerard had fallen, that she had been an educated girl, with airs and graces, as good as any gentry girl, once.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the days of her father’s fame, from her girlhood, Sybil could remember Mick Radley’s like. She knew the kind of boy that he had been. Ragged angry factory-boys, penny-a-score, who would crowd her father after his torchlight speeches, and do whatever he commanded. Rip up railroad tracks, kick the boiler-plugs out of spinning jennies, lay policemen’s helmets by his feet. She and her father had fled from town to town, often by night, living in cellars, attics, anonymous rooms-to-let, hiding from the Rad police and the daggers of other conspirators. And sometimes, when his own wild speeches had filled him with a burning elation, her father would embrace her and soberly promise her the world. She would live like gentry in a green and quiet England, when King Steam was wrecked. When Byron and his Industrial Radicals were utterly destroyed. . . .20th aniversary edition; Introduction by Cory Doctorow","brand":"Spectra","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304198099173,"sku":"NP9780440423621","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780440423621.jpg?v=1767739018","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-difference-engine-isbn-9780440423621","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}