If you loved how Babbage’s engines and punch cards in The Difference Engine upended society—putting Lord Byron in Downing Street and Ada at the center of a new technocracy—then The Mechanical will hit that same nerve. You’ll follow Jax, a clockwork servitor whose very programming is a political weapon, through intrigues as ruthless as Laurence Oliphant’s schemes and back-alley gambits as perilous as Sybil Gerard’s. The way precision machinery redraws the map of empires here echoes the Engine’s reach across London’s clubs, factories, and ministries—only with teeth.

The same thrill you got from seeing a Victoria where analytical engines steer policy and power—Byron as PM, radicals and Tories circling—comes alive in The Warlord of the Air. Moorcock’s alternate 1900s bristles with airships, imperial rivalries, and revolutionary plots that mirror the card-trail conspiracies Edward Mallory stumbles into. If the Great Engine’s tentacles into government fascinated you, watching empires jockey from gondolas and dirigibles will scratch that alternate-history itch.

Political maneuvering was half the fun in The Difference Engine—from Sybil Gerard’s careful navigation of gentlemen’s clubs to backroom deals that keep the Engine’s cards moving. In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, that same dance plays out through cabinet rooms, salons, and military campaigns, as magicians become instruments of statecraft. If watching Disraeli, Byron, and the ‘savants’ leverage new power structures hooked you, you’ll relish Norrell’s bureaucratic grip and Strange’s insurgent stunts reshaping policy and war.

Chasing that chain of punched cards through hackneyed streets and smoky workshops is a big part of The Difference Engine’s pull. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack gives you that same momentum: Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Swinburne unravel a baffling case through a London of pneumatic tubes, engineered oddities, and secret societies. If the Engine’s kinotropes, salons, and data-trails kept you sleuthing, this feverish mystery will keep you turning pages late.

If you enjoyed The Difference Engine’s mosaic of voices—Sybil Gerard’s survival, Edward Mallory’s scientific ambitions, even glimpses of Ada and Oliphant—this novel’s wide cast and shifting viewpoints will captivate you. The Years of Rice and Salt rebuilds history from the ground up, following recurring souls across centuries. It offers the same intellectual pleasure of watching a timeline skew and society reorganize—like seeing Britain rebuilt around engines—only on a global canvas.