Cover art
Gibson, William, and Bruce Sterling. The Difference Engine. Bantam/Spectra 1992.
Cover art
Gibson, William, and Bruce Sterling. The Difference Engine. Translated to the French as La machine à différences, Livre de Poche 2001.

Gibson, William, and Bruce Sterling. The Difference Engine
Divergence: 1824 CE
What if: Byron led the Industrial Radicals to English power, and Babbage perfected his analytical engine so that the Information Age began a century early.
Summary: A paleontologist accidentally acquires a set of punch cards from Ada Byron, dropping him right in the middle of a circle of mayhem and murder.
Comments: A definition and explanation of many terms may be found in Eileen Gunn's "The Difference Dictionary, q.v. Also, the novel has been described as a cyberpunk/steampunk rewrite of Benjamin Disraeli's 1845 novel Sybil, or The Two Nations, as many of the same characters appear in both.
Published: Gollancz 1990 (0575047623), 1991 (057505297X), 2011 (0575099402BUY); Bantam/Spectra 1991 (0553070282BUY, 057505073XBUY), 1992 (055329461XBUY), 2011 (0440423627BUY); BOMC 1991; BOMC/QPBC 1992; and Gollancz/Vista 1996 (0575600292BUY).
Published: Chapter one was excerpted as "The Angel of Goliad", in Interzone #40 (October 1990).
Original in: English.
Translation: Czech by Pavel Dolezal as Masina zazraku, Navrat 1999.
Translation: Nederlands by Peter Cuijper as De stoomvlinder, Meulenhoff 1992 (9029041641).
Translation: French by Bernard Sigaud as La machine à différences, Laffont 1996 (2221082494), Livre de Poche 2001 (2253072311).
Translation: German by Walter Brumm as Die Differenz-maschine, Heyne 1991 (345305380X).
Translation: Italian by Delio Zinoni as La macchina della realtà, Mondadori 1992 (8804360410), 1995.
Translation: Japanese as title unknown, publ. unknown.
Translation: Nederlands by Peter Cuijpers as De stoomvlinder, Muelenhoff (1992).
Translation: Polish by Piotr W. Cholewa as Maszyna roznicowa, MAG 1997 (83865725253).
Translation: Portuguese by Ludmila Hashimoto as A Máquina Diferencial, Aleph 2012, 2015.
Translation: Romanian by Gabriel Stoian as Machina diferențială, Nemira 1998 (973569273X).
Translation: Russian as Mashchina Razlichiy, publ. unknown.
Translation: Spanish as La máquina diferencial, La Factoría de Ideas year unknown (8498002818).
Awards: Nominee: 1991 Nebula for best novel. Nominee: 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Gunn, Eileen. "The Difference Dictionary"
Comments: A decoding of hundreds of references in Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine, q.v.
Published: In Science Fiction Eye, Winter 1991. Subsequently posted on The SF Site and later on the author's personal website.
Web link: The Difference Dictionary