The Difference Engine

Context:

Described as a counterfactual novel in which Ada Lovelace and Babbage create the computer age in Victorian Britain. The hosts note that the pivot point of this alternate history is Lady Byron submitting to sodomy rather than leaving her husband, which enables Byron to become prime minister — described as 'an unlikely prospect.'

Context:

Tom Holland describes this as a science fiction novel imagining a world where Babbage and Ada Lovelace successfully invented the computer, resulting in a technologically advanced Victorian England run by computers. He uses it to illustrate how technological counterfactuals are essentially pure fantasy because technology emerges from very specific cultural, economic, and social circumstances that cannot simply be transplanted to different periods.