Bruce Sterling

1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. And three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with history--and the future:

Sybil Gerard--a fallen woman, politician's tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator

Edward "Leviathan" Mallory--explorer

Before email,
before the world wide web,
before hackers,
Before sexting,
before always-on GPS,
before titanium implants,
before Alexa, Cortana, and Siri,
before the computer in your pocket was more powerful than the one that sent astronauts to the moon,
there was cyberpunk.

And science fiction was never the same.

Cyberpunk writers—serious, smart, and courageous in the face of change—exposed the naiveté