1984, when the Internet took shape, and when everyone was still shocked by the magical functions of the fourth generation of computers and enjoying the convenience brought by technology, a young man who studied for an British literature degree at British Columbia University and knew nothing about computers and the Internet typed "Neural Wanderer" word by word on the traditional typewriter , bringing science fiction literature into the "electronic era".
This young man is William Gibson . It is precisely because of his work that he has created a new science fiction category: " Cyberpunk ".
In 1991, he collaborated with another "cyberpunk" master, Bruce Sterling, a science fiction novel with a fiction novel with an overview, called "Different Machine", which made another science fiction genre popular: "Steampunk". The concept of
differential machine originated from a real historical background. It was designed by British mathematician Charles Babbage in 1822. It is equivalent to the world's first " mechanical computer ", which can perform a certain degree of function operations.
In William Gibson's "Different Machine", this differential machine that has never been truly put into use in history has become a wonderful big data machine in the Victorian era, and no one can avoid the exploration of differential machines.
In the story, the author points out the drawbacks of the industrial age: although science and technology develop, the environment is destroyed; although the development of science and technology brings convenience to people, it does not bring longer-term peace; the two-level differentiation of society is even greater, the poor become poorer, and the rich become richer.
The interesting thing about this book "Difference Machine" lies in two points. First of all, as the founder of steampunk, its imagination is beyond words. As a work that combines the seven years of hard work of two science fiction masters, the various different types and functions of different machines in the book demonstrate the two masters' super imagination.
is the second place to set up the history. The book is interspersed with many unstoppable historical events and many famous historical figures. The authors could have used some unimportant names to describe it, but they used actual historical figures to make the story more interesting, from boring characters to easter eggs. I believe that history fans will be very interested.
But it may be because it was written by two authors. I feel that the overall story is not so coherent, and some places are very redundant. For example, Sybil's story consumes too much, and the performance of the protagonist Mallory does not seem to have much effect on the plot. In the end, the handling of the conspiracy is a bit too rough. Captain Swin, as the final boss, seems to have left the scene a bit hasty.
However, in addition to this, this work is still very excellent.
From the current perspective, because we have experienced too much technology baptism, "steampunk" seems to be less attractive than "cyberpunk". But at that time, the era where William Gibson and Bruce Sterling were, was the watershed between machinery and electronics, and no one knew what the future would be like. Is Cyberpunk winning or Steampunk going to the end? No one knows, let alone two young people in literature majors.
But from a literary perspective, they provided too many possibilities for the world at that time. This wild imagination also provided too many valuable thoughts for later Miyazaki , Spielberg, James Cameron and others.
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