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primeideal) wrote2024-11-02 08:16 pm
primeideal) wrote2024-11-02 08:16 pm
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(SFF Bingo): The Difference Engine, by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
This is an influential early work in the genre that became steampunk. The premise: Charles Babbage's analog computer, and Ada Byron (Lovelace's) punch-card programming system, were wild successes, and the UK government and economy were revolutionized by the technocracy. So a lot of the fun is seeing where RL historical figures are in this alternate history. Ada's father, Lord Byron, is the Prime Minister; Babbage and Charles Darwin are important members of parliament; John Keats did not die of tuberculosis, and is a successful "kinotropist" (pixelated animator); Texas is still independent (and the Confederacy arose early), and Sam Houston is in exile in London; Benjamin Disraeli is a well-connected journalist; Theo Gautier gets namedropped late (thank you Les Mis tumblr fandom for introducing me to the Romantic-adjacent RPF guys); there's a student society called the "Young Men's Agnostic Association." People ride around on wheeled shoes, there are new weapons for the Crimean War (a little reminiscent of the weird alt-history of "The Eyre Affair"), letters burst into flame (like Howlers!), and computing engines are run by "clackers" (shades of Discworld). Nice. One of the main functions of the government's central computer system is criminology, which, if you consider the uses big data is put to in our world, makes a lot of sense.
However, the main characters and plot are not as compelling. Sybil Gerard is the daughter of a deceased Luddite protester, and has since fallen on hard times; Edward "Ned" Mallory is a paleontologist who has recently returned from fossil-hunting in Wyoming. Both of them, several months apart, run across a mysterious box full of special punch cards, which are important enough that people are getting killed over them. So Sybil and Ned are trying to avoid getting killed, and possibly bring the villains to justice. Sybil is mostly in the wrong place at the wrong time; Ned has a little more agency, having accepted the box as a favor for Lady Ada herself.
Like "Shadow and Claw," the authors did a lot of work on diction and prose--a lot of the jargon is based on Sterling's exhaustive research into Victorian-era texts. As Cory Doctorow points out in the foreword to the 20th anniversary edition, this would be a lot easier now with the Internet, but took a lot of university library research in 1990. This leads to some fun turns of phrase ("flash mob" appears more than once, but not in the modern sense; "flash" meaning expensive-looking, stylish, showy, and "mob" in the more general sense of rabble). On the other hand, it sometimes crosses too far into "my learnings, let me show you them."
Sybil is a politician's "tart." Ned wins up sleeping with one of her former neighbors, who namedrops Sybil--maybe this is where the plotlines connect and they realize they're both in trouble because of the same McGuffin? No, it's completely superfluous and has nothing to do with anything. One of the villains tries to ruin Ned's family by sending an anonymous letter to his sister's fiance claiming that the sister was unchaste, and this is the inciting incident that gets Ned and his brothers to fight back. A group of young Japanese students eager to learn from the rapidly modernizing UK bring an automaton in the form of a woman who pours drinks. This is based on real technology, so it's not completely gratituous. But for me, it was one of those experiences where any one of these choices on their own might have been fine, but taken together, they got tiresome. (A snippet near the end suggests that Lord Byron's wife was the real power behind the throne, and of course Ada is an important figure when she's not in thrall to her gambling debtors, but after 455 pages a lot of impressions have already been formed.)
The most relatable I found any of the protagonists was when Ned was being interviewed by Disraeli for a series of newspaper columns. Ned just wants to talk about dinosaurs and what it means for his theories; Disraeli wants a "human interest" angle and keeps prodding Ned for more about his awkward sex life among the Cheyenne in Wyoming. Previously, we'd established that Ned supports the "catastrophist" hypothesis that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a single event, in contrast to the "uniformitarians." As modern readers, we know that the dinosaurs probably were wiped out by a single event, so Ned comes across as the rational one. But then:
Around the 90% mark, the narration zooms out; instead of the POV characters, we get snippets of in-universe documentation. Which, I'd already decided that those alt-history glimpses were my favorite part, so that was neat. The resolution of the MacGuffin plotline is a little suspension-of-disbelief-y; like, if there really was an enormous supercomputer behind the scenes of a country, there would certainly be people who would want to hack it or shut it down. But would accelerating the development of theoretical math by a few decades really let you do that? Eh.
Doctorow reminds us to "consider that Bill and Bruce wrote this book by FedExing floppy disks to each other..." (emphasis his), which is as gripping an image as any in the book, in terms of digital technology and how fast things change.
Bingo: Multi-POV, published in the 1990s, reference materials (alt-history map).
However, the main characters and plot are not as compelling. Sybil Gerard is the daughter of a deceased Luddite protester, and has since fallen on hard times; Edward "Ned" Mallory is a paleontologist who has recently returned from fossil-hunting in Wyoming. Both of them, several months apart, run across a mysterious box full of special punch cards, which are important enough that people are getting killed over them. So Sybil and Ned are trying to avoid getting killed, and possibly bring the villains to justice. Sybil is mostly in the wrong place at the wrong time; Ned has a little more agency, having accepted the box as a favor for Lady Ada herself.
Like "Shadow and Claw," the authors did a lot of work on diction and prose--a lot of the jargon is based on Sterling's exhaustive research into Victorian-era texts. As Cory Doctorow points out in the foreword to the 20th anniversary edition, this would be a lot easier now with the Internet, but took a lot of university library research in 1990. This leads to some fun turns of phrase ("flash mob" appears more than once, but not in the modern sense; "flash" meaning expensive-looking, stylish, showy, and "mob" in the more general sense of rabble). On the other hand, it sometimes crosses too far into "my learnings, let me show you them."
Huxley looked Mallory up and down, with the narrow-set, pitilessly observant eyes that had discovered "Huxley's Layer" in the root of the human hair.
When critiquing a piece of media for "male gaze" issues, it's important to bear in mind that depiction is not endorsement, and reasonable people will disagree on where the boundary is. I really enjoy "Blade Runner 2049," which portrays a society with lots of objectification of women (see: Joi the hologram). My interpretation is that the movie is trying to show why that attitude is a dangerous dead end, not something to strive for. But other people dislike it.Sybil is a politician's "tart." Ned wins up sleeping with one of her former neighbors, who namedrops Sybil--maybe this is where the plotlines connect and they realize they're both in trouble because of the same McGuffin? No, it's completely superfluous and has nothing to do with anything. One of the villains tries to ruin Ned's family by sending an anonymous letter to his sister's fiance claiming that the sister was unchaste, and this is the inciting incident that gets Ned and his brothers to fight back. A group of young Japanese students eager to learn from the rapidly modernizing UK bring an automaton in the form of a woman who pours drinks. This is based on real technology, so it's not completely gratituous. But for me, it was one of those experiences where any one of these choices on their own might have been fine, but taken together, they got tiresome. (A snippet near the end suggests that Lord Byron's wife was the real power behind the throne, and of course Ada is an important figure when she's not in thrall to her gambling debtors, but after 455 pages a lot of impressions have already been formed.)
The most relatable I found any of the protagonists was when Ned was being interviewed by Disraeli for a series of newspaper columns. Ned just wants to talk about dinosaurs and what it means for his theories; Disraeli wants a "human interest" angle and keeps prodding Ned for more about his awkward sex life among the Cheyenne in Wyoming. Previously, we'd established that Ned supports the "catastrophist" hypothesis that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a single event, in contrast to the "uniformitarians." As modern readers, we know that the dinosaurs probably were wiped out by a single event, so Ned comes across as the rational one. But then:
"No one but a specialist wants to read about the hinging pressures of a reptile's jawbone, Mallory. Truth to tell, there's only one thing people really want to know about dinosaurs: why the damned things are all dead."
"I thought we agreed to save that for the end."
"Oh, yes. Makes a fine climax, that business with the great smashing comet, and the great black dust-storm wiping out all reptilian life and so forth. Very dramatic, very catastrophic. That's what the public likes about Catastrophism, Mallory. Catastrophe feels better than this Uniformity drivel about the Earth being a thousand million years old. Tedious and boring--boring on the face of it!"
"An appeal to vulgar emotion is neither here nor there!" Mallory said hotly. "The evidence supports me! Look at the Moon--absolutely covered with comet-craters."
"Yes," Disraeli said absently, "rigorous science, so much the better."
"No one can explain how the Sun could burn for even ten million years. No combustion could last that long--it violates elementary laws of physics!"
It's actually the Uniformitarians who have a more accurate understanding of the immense timescale of evolution. Neither camp is totally correct; that's part of the process of doing science. (On the other hand, the "surprise" of "actually the socialists are as wildly racist as anyone else" was sad as much as funny.)"I thought we agreed to save that for the end."
"Oh, yes. Makes a fine climax, that business with the great smashing comet, and the great black dust-storm wiping out all reptilian life and so forth. Very dramatic, very catastrophic. That's what the public likes about Catastrophism, Mallory. Catastrophe feels better than this Uniformity drivel about the Earth being a thousand million years old. Tedious and boring--boring on the face of it!"
"An appeal to vulgar emotion is neither here nor there!" Mallory said hotly. "The evidence supports me! Look at the Moon--absolutely covered with comet-craters."
"Yes," Disraeli said absently, "rigorous science, so much the better."
"No one can explain how the Sun could burn for even ten million years. No combustion could last that long--it violates elementary laws of physics!"
Around the 90% mark, the narration zooms out; instead of the POV characters, we get snippets of in-universe documentation. Which, I'd already decided that those alt-history glimpses were my favorite part, so that was neat. The resolution of the MacGuffin plotline is a little suspension-of-disbelief-y; like, if there really was an enormous supercomputer behind the scenes of a country, there would certainly be people who would want to hack it or shut it down. But would accelerating the development of theoretical math by a few decades really let you do that? Eh.
Doctorow reminds us to "consider that Bill and Bruce wrote this book by FedExing floppy disks to each other..." (emphasis his), which is as gripping an image as any in the book, in terms of digital technology and how fast things change.
Bingo: Multi-POV, published in the 1990s, reference materials (alt-history map).