>Really? I totally missed that! How did you figure that out? Was there a
>clue or tipoff that I missed? [snip] Unfortunatekly Occam's Razor tells me
that they
>didn't have a coherent way to end the story and it just ran out of steam
>(pun intended). The other stuff sounds like justification after the fact to
>me. YMMV
MKdoesV. The QT spin is surely justification *before* the fact, since it
occurred to me as I was reading, rather than after Gibson confirmed it
(unless *he* was pulling *my* leg, which may be what you're suggesting.)
I figured it out the way a chicken sexer does it, through codes invisible to
the human eye - I'm just *very good at it* as a result of an injudiciously
large amount of sf reading over, um, 40-something years. I wish I was as
efficient in some skill that paid $$$...
BTW, it helps your enjoyment if you notice that many of the characters in
DIFFERENCE ENGINE are from Victorian literature: e.g., Sybil Gerard, Dandy
Mick and Egremont are from Disraeli's 1845 SYBIL.
Damien Broderick.