>Ah..I'm going to have to throw in my 2 cents, so I can keep a link to this thread and look these books up later.
>
>"The Difference Engine" sounds a lot "The Man in the High Castle" Philip K. Dick's novel about a USA after the Nazis won WWII.

Can't really say - read the first some 30 years after the other... From what I remember, PKD has done yet another of his masterful "but which one is real?", while Gibson's sounds just too real. Hard to decide :).