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The Difference Engine
- Narrated by: Andrew Cullum
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
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The Difference Engine
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Publisher's summary
1855: 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 palaeontologist; 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.
Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine took the science-fiction community by storm when it was first published. It is a prime example of the steampunk sub-genre; it posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer called engines.
Provocative, compelling and intensely imagined, this audiobook is poised to impress a whole new generation.
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