Clacking Control Societies:

Steampunk, History, and the Difference Engine of Escape

Abstract

Steampunk fiction uses strategic anachronism, counterfactual scenarios, and historical contingency in order to explore the interconnections between nineteenth-century and contemporary techno-scientific culture. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s novel The Difference Engine (1990), a prominent exemplar of this contemporary genre, depicts a neo-Victorian setting in which the inventor Charles Babbage builds a proto-computer based on the “Analytical Engine” design that he proposed but never actually constructed in our own nineteenth century. The alternative chronology of the novel re-imagines Victorian texts and historical events, including Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil (1845) and the industrial revolution, in order to examine literary history and investigate historiography. This essay analyses The Difference Engine’s commentary on the history of power relations. It contends that the novel’s alternative genealogy helps us examine the evolution of control systems and think about the shape of history.