Question about "Difference Engine", William Gibson?

Position:Home>Books & Authors> Question about "Difference Engine", William Gibson?

Question:

Now, I feel a bit stupid for asking, but what exactly happened in that novel!? What exactly was on the Napoleon Cards that they were after!? And who exactly created them!? And what happened to all of them!?

I found this book harder to follow then all the others he has written!.!. anyone agree!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

What was on the cards!?
Some consequence of "Godel's incompleteness theorem" or its equivalent in that world!. A proof that there cannot be perfect proofs, very loosely!. Something disturbing to humans, but cog-jamming to any system not equipped with a good degree of tolerance, and the ability to handle fuzzy logic!.

A variant on the "truth too terrible to be allowed free" theme!.
More complex and rigorous than Captain Kirk's simple use of the Epimenides paradox to foul up a computer in "I, Mudd!." but not a million miles removed from there!.

An enjoyable read, but I've alternate "steam-punk" worlds I prefer!.
Moorcock's Oswald Bastable books were possible the earliest I encountered, long before the term was coined!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The action of the story follows Sybil Gerard, a political courtesan and daughter of an executed Luddite leader (she is borrowed from 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"!.[1] 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!.

During the story, many characters come to believe that the punch cards are a gambling "modus," a program that would, theoretically, always allow the user to place reliable bets!. This is in line with Ada Lovelace's penchant for gambling (in both the novel and actuality)!. Only in the last chapter is it revealed that the punched cards represent a program which prove two theorems which in reality would not be discovered until 1931 by Kurt G?del!. Ada Lovelace delivers a lecture on the subject in France!.

Defending the cards, Mallory gathers his brothers and a policeman to fight the revolutionary Captain Swing who leads a London riot during "the Stink", a major episode of pollution in which London swelters under an inversion layer (comparable to the London Smog of December 1952)!.

After the abortive uprising, Oliphant and the pseudonymous former Sybil Gerard meet at a cafe in Chablis!. Oliphant informs her that he is aware of her true identity, but will not pursue it, although he does want information that would compromise her seducer, Charles Egremont MP, now regarded as an obstacle to the strategies and political ambitions of Lords Brunel and Babbage!. Sybil has longed for the opportunity for vengeance against Egremont, and the resultant political scandal destroys his parliamentary career and aspirations for a merit lordship!. Oliphant also encounters a Manhattan-based group of feminist pantomime artists, uncannily similar to contemporary feminist performance artists involved in debates over US National Endowment for the Arts funding in the late eighties and early nineties in our world!.

After several vignettes that elaborate on the alternate historical origins of the world of The Difference Engine, Ada Lovelace delivers the aforementioned lecture on Godels Theorem, as its counterpart is known in our world!. She is chaperoned by Fraser, and castigated by Sybil Gerard, who is still unable to forgive Ada's own father, the late Lord Byron, for his role in her own father's death!.

At the very end of the novel, there is a dystopian depiction of an alternate 1991 from the vantage point of Ada Lovelace!. Throughout the novel's latter sections, there are references to an "Eye", which appears to be a metaphor for Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon- the concept of omnipresent surveillance technology initially mooted for nineteenth century prison architecture, and the subject of contemporary concern about its intrusions against human rights and civil liberties from authoritarian western societies who use the development of information technology to monitor, regulate and police their populations, as Michel Foucault noted in his Discipline and Punish (1977)!. Human beings appear to have become digitised ephemeral ciphers at the mercy of a sentient artificial intelligence, implied to be as a consequence of this world's accelerated development of information technology!.

http://en!.wikipedia!.org/wiki/The_Differe!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com