SOURCE: “Cyberpunk Meets Charles Babbage: The Difference Engine as Alternative Victorian History,” in Victorian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 1, Autumn, 1994, pp. 1-23.

In the following essay, Sussman discusses the cyberpunk reinterpretation of Victorian history in The Difference Engine.

Taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skilful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all of our parts. It is not just that science and technology are possible means of great human satisfaction, as well as a matrix of complex dominations. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves.

—Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” (181)

In The Difference Engine (1991), William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, two leading writers of cyberpunk,¹ leave...