This book is a unique hybrid of hard sci-fi and historical mystery thriller, written by two of the biggest names in the "cyberpunk" genre. Set in 1855 London, it explores how things might have been if Charles Babbage had actually completed his Analytical Engine and sparked the beginning of the Computer Age 100 years earlier. Massive steam-driven computers appear, like something out of Jules Verne, offering great power to those who control them, and a new class of royalty appears: the technocrats. The story centers around a box of stolen punch cards (computer program) of mysterious design, and the efforts by a number of groups to find them.

Slow-moving at times, but Gibson & Sterling have created an realistic (and often nightmarish) vision of London during the Great Fires and pose some interesting questions about the ways in which technology affects society... and vice versa.

Released on Thursday, August 22, 2002 at Starbuck's Coffee Shop On The Plaza Not In Barnes & Noble in Kansas City, Missouri USA.