The difference machine
The Difference Engine (English original title: The Difference Engine ) is a novel from 1990 and the result of a collaboration between the two authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling . The work can be assigned to the genres of alternative world history and science fiction and is often referred to as the first representative of the steampunk subgenre. The action takes place mainly in London in 1855 and revolves around a mysterious pile of punched cards , a simple storage medium consisting of punched cards that can be read by the differential machine of the title , a mechanical computer. Various people try to get this pile of punched cards under their control, although the actual meaning of the information on it remains completely unclear until the end of the novel. As a result, as in other William Gibson stories, the pile is largely a MacGuffin .
History and setting
The novel is set in Great Britain in 1855, in the middle of the Victorian era . In contrast to real historiography, however, the country went through a completely different development starting in the early 1830s . This development was mainly driven by the so-called Radical Party, led by Lord Georg Gordon Byron , who (in contrast to the real timeline) survived the Greek War of Independence . The radicals aim to remove all obstacles to scientific, economic and industrial progress. Until 1830, they were prevented from doing this by Lord Wellington , who led the country as the reactionary and dictatorial Prime Minister . When he is killed in a bomb attack, however, the way is clear and Byron becomes the new Prime Minister. Meanwhile, the blame for the attack on Wellington is blamed on the Luddites , a movement of machine attackers who demonstrated for better working conditions in the factories. Some of its spokesmen are sentenced and hanged at the instigation of the new Radical Party government . In the book, however, hints are made in the course of the plot that the radicals themselves had launched the assassination attempt to get the Wellington dictatorship out of the way, and that the Luddites were merely abused as pawn sacrifices to present a culprit to the public.
Immediately after taking power, the new government implemented its ambitious program and abolished class boundaries and church restrictions that previously restricted industry and science. The British Empire then experienced a colossal industrial surge . Huge factories are built, society becomes more mobile thanks to self-driving cars and Charles Babbage develops his difference machine, which he planned in the actual timeline but never completed. In the course of this development, a new upper class of practically inclined, nouveau riche industrialists and important scientists is forming, to whom titles of nobility are now increasingly being awarded (e.g. Isambard Kingdom Brunel , William Colgate and Charles Darwin bear the title of lordship ). In the coming decades, a society will emerge that is characterized by a purely useful and feasible thinking, while art, culture and similar aspects of public life wither.
The novel describes an alternative 19th century in the course of the plot , in which the overwhelming power of the British Empire, created by the rule of the Radical Party, has massive effects across the globe. The United States of America is in a (premature) civil war between the Northern and Southern states , and Texas and California have split off as independent republics . In New York , in the chaos of the civil war, the socialist commune of Manhattan was proclaimed. In Europe, the French Empire , under the rule of Napoleon III. , the most important political power next to Great Britain and tries to keep pace with the rapid technical development with its own difference machines (based on a special French design). The Crimean War , which was fought between the Russian Empire and Great Britain from 1853 to 1856 , also takes place in the novel. However, through the use of technically superior artillery and armored vehicles , the British troops are obviously vastly superior to the Russians. The isolated empire of Japan, on the other hand, was forcibly opened to the West by British warships (not by the American " black ships " as in the real timeline) and is now trying to learn from the British through lively cultural exchange to become the most powerful and progressive nation in Asia to ascend.
In the course of the novel there are a number of actual historical personalities who, however, have followed a completely different life path in the alternative timeline. Karl Marx left London for America because of his frustration with the obvious success of the capitalist system and is a leading figure in the Manhattan Commune. Benjamin Disraeli lives and works as a writer in London with no apparent intention to ever become Prime Minister as he did in the real timeline. The poet John Keats appears as a so-called kinotropist, i.e. as the operator of a simple cinema that can play a film with the help of mechanical pixels. Author Laurence Oliphant is a writer only in the eyes of the public and in reality works as an agent and chief of the secret police. The French writer Théophile Gautier is a programmer and expert on the French difference machines in this alternative world.
action
The novel begins with Sybil Gerard, the daughter of the Luddite activist Walter Gerard, who was convicted and executed when the Radical Party came to power. It was then that the rising politician Lord Charles Egremont made sure that Walter Gerard was arrested. After her father's execution, Sybil collapses and ends up as a prostitute in the streets of London . Years later, at the point when the novel begins, the same Egremont who once betrayed her father becomes one of her customers, albeit without knowing her identity. Another suitor, Michael Bradley, reveals to Sybil one day that he can offer her a way out of her previous life. Bradley has found out her identity and wants to take Sybil under his wing as an assistant and apprentice. She is supposed to accompany him on a trip to Europe, on which Bradley is traveling together with the former Texan President Samuel Houston . He was overthrown in a military coup at home and is now on the road in Europe to find supporters and donors with whose help he can set up an army in Mexico to regain power in Texas. To this end, he is holding a series of lectures in London, which will be continued in Paris over the next few days . Bradley accompanies Houston as a cinema tropist who is supposed to accompany Houston's lecture visually. Before the lecture begins, Bradley gives Sybil the task of bringing a wooden box with a mysterious pile of punched cards to the post office and sending it to Paris. The information on the punch cards is supposed to prove a number of mathematical formulas, but Bradley doesn't want to reveal more. Since the cards are processed according to the French industrial standard, Bradley cannot have them read out in London and then wants to do so in Paris on a French computer. Before leaving for the continent, which is to take place the night after the lecture, Sybil sends a telegram to Egremont revealing her true identity and threatening Egremont that she will leave England in the company of powerful friends. But the departure does not take place as planned. The drunk Houston gets into an argument with Bradley at the hotel bar and no longer wants to work with him. In Houston's hotel room, an assassin from the Texan junta attacks the group that is supposed to kill Houston. Houston survives shot but Bradley dies in a scuffle. Sybil and Houston then make their way to France on different routes, but where they do not meet. It is later learned that Houston will not achieve its goal of regaining power in Texas.
Some time later, the paleontologist and explorer Edward Mallory returns to Great Britain from a lengthy research expedition in America. During his excavations in Wyoming , he unearthed the fossil remains of a dinosaur that the press calls "Land- Leviathan ", which has earned it the nickname "Leviathan-Mallory". While attending a car race , Mallory notices a woman and a man who are accompanied by a second woman. The second woman, whose face is covered with a veil , is obviously forced to be in the control of the other two people. Mallory has a wild fight with the unknown man and frees the woman. He leads her to the Royal Enclosure, where she entrusts him with the wooden box with the punched cards, which the reader knows to be Bradley's possession, which Sybil Gerard had sent to Paris. It is still completely unclear how the pile of punched cards came into their possession. The unknown woman entrusts Mallory with the safekeeping. Only when she is already at the police cordon off the royal enclosure does she lift her veil and reveal herself as Ada Byron , the daughter of Lord Byron, the Prime Minister, who is also known as a gifted programmer .
Back in London, where Mallory works for the Royal Society , he receives a threatening letter signed "Captain Swing" demanding that he return the punched cards. Swing threatens to destroy Mallory and spreads some rough rumors about him, including that he is supposed to be the murderer of a colleague Prof. Francis Rudwick who was killed shortly before. In addition, two street crooks chase Mallory and seriously injure him in a scuffle. Mallory is therefore placed under police protection by the chief of the secret police, Laurence Oliphant . Oliphant also investigates the two strangers who Mallory had met at the racetrack and from whose power he had freed Ada Byron. Mallory can also find out the name of the woman who was present at the racetrack during a visit to the statistics office, where huge amounts of data about convicted criminals are stored on huge difference machines. Her name is Florence Russel Bartlett. The man's name remains unknown, but Mallory is certain that he must be identical to Captain Swing, from whom the threatening letters came. In order to protect the pile of punched cards he has taken into custody from Ada Byron, he works it into the skull of a colossal plaster figure of the dinosaur he discovered in the Museum of Paleontology. He informs Ada Byron of the whereabouts in writing.
Parallel to the events surrounding Mallory and the pile of punched cards, anarchy-like riots break out in London , triggered by a phenomenon known as the Great Stench . The lack of rain and fresh wind ensure that a huge cloud of smog, haze, factory smoke and stinking vapors from the Thames , which no longer flushes away the sewage due to the lack of rain, has settled over the city. The parliament , the royal court and the entire wealthy class of the city have already fled to the countryside or other cities. In the hot and sticky haze in the streets, the police lose control of the city. Looting gangs break into shops and fight street battles with the police and fire brigade , the transport network collapses and all steam engines are turned off to prevent further smog. In the midst of the chaos, Mallory sees posters all over town spreading compromising lies about him. Other posters also call for rebellion and anarchy, including by equating modern London with the biblical whore Babylon and calling it " Baby London ". Through a clarifying conversation with the poster sticker, Mallory finds out that the posters were commissioned by Captain Swing. The poster sticker also reveals to Mallory the whereabouts of Swings - the West Indiendocks. While the riot of the Great Stench was raging, Mallory, two of his brothers who had hurried up, and Inspector Frazer, who was posted to Mallory's protection, went to Swings headquarters at the docks and engaged in a shootout with its supporters. When it starts to rain and the end of the Great Stench and the Swings activities are expected soon, Swing tries to kill Mallory in a last desperate act, but is shot by him. His confidante, Florence Russel Bartlett, escapes.
While the Great Stench was raging in London, Prime Minister Byron died of old age. He is succeeded by Lord Brunel, under whose government Charles Egremont was given a high position and launched an aggressive anti-Luddite campaign. He accuses Luddites of being to blame for the anarchic unrest in London, although the movement has ceased to exist since the Radical Party's years of power. In the supposed fight against Luddites, Egremont gradually takes control of various state institutions, above all the powerful Statistical Office, and soon threatens to rule Britain autocratically . While Egremont's rule gradually solidified, Oliphant continues to investigate the real murderer of Prof. Rudwick, as well as the background to the assassination attempt on Houston, in which Michael Bradley was killed. The perpetrator responsible for both murders, the Texan assassin, can only be found dead in his apartment, killed by poisoned beans. Everything indicates that the escaped Florence Russel Bartlett had supported the Texan and harnessed him for her purposes, but now no longer needed him. She is killed a few days later in a skirmish with the police when she tries to steal the plaster skull with the pile of punched cards from the museum where Mallory had hidden it. In her pocket, Oliphant finds a letter from Ada Byron. Only then does it become apparent that Ada Byron had involuntarily been in cahoots with the Swing group the whole time. The letter reveals much of the backstory. Ada Byron wanted people by programming a "high their gambling debts at Swings mode ", a program with which one betting results can predict settle. However, the mode fell into the hands of Bradley, who had it sent from Sybil to Paris. After Florence Russel Bartlett brought the mode back into her possession and thus under control Swings in France, the mode should be tried out on the racetrack, but this was prevented again by the intervention of Mallory. However, when Mallory entrusted the whereabouts of the pile of punched cards to Ada Byron, she immediately passed the information on to Swing in order to pay off her debts. Now, after the deaths of Swing and Bartlett, Oliphant takes the pile of punched cards and keeps it in private, for fear it could fall into the hands of the increasingly powerful Egremont. As part of the investigation, Oliphant also came across the text of the telegram that Sybil had sent to Egremont before she left the hotel where the attack took place. In it Sybil had reminded Egremont of his betrayal of her father. Oliphant sees a way to prevent the consolidation of Egremont's rule over Great Britain. With the help of his friend Lucien Arslau, a high-ranking representative of the French security apparatus , Oliphant visits Sybil in Paris. He convinces her to blackmail Egremont with her knowledge of his betrayal of Walter Gerard and thus to end his political career. Sybil writes a letter in which she threatens Egremont to make the story public. When a Japanese student and confidante of Oliphants hands the letter to Egremont, the reader suspects that Egremont's political ambitions will come to an end.
The last chapter of the novel consists of a number of individual documents, including newspaper articles , letters , private diary entries , which clarify (in a documentary style) some open background and parts of the prehistory of the plot. The last section describes how Ada Byron has a vision of the future after a lecture in Paris. In it she sees how in modern London in 1991 (one year after the actual publication of the book) a modern supercomputer obviously analyzed the events of that time in order to understand its own history. He turns out to be the narrator of the plot. It becomes clear that the program on the pile of punched cards was the basis for programming the computer. In the face of the knowledge of its own genesis, the computer recognizes itself and develops its own consciousness . As a result, he speaks of himself as self for the first time.
criticism
It was emphasized in reviews of the book that the world portrayed merely constructs a literary environment that, despite all the colorful decorations, refers to our present and its problems.
Book editions
- The Difference Engine . Victor Gollancz, London 1990.
- The difference machine . Heyne, 1992, ISBN 3-453-05380-X .
- The difference machine . Heyne, 2012, ISBN 978-3-453-52672-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Karsten Kruschel : The steam-powered gas-lit nightmare. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year 1993. , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-453-06202-7 , pp. 685f.