I'm a sucker for stories that imagine alternate histories. Philip K. Dick wrote a classic, 1962's "The Man in the High Castle," that supposed Japan and Germany won World War II, and annexed the United States between them. Another came to mind last week; "The Difference Engine" (1990) by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

The difference engine (and another machine, called the analytical engine) were steam-powered calculators — mechanical computers designed and built by the Victorian mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage. He was funded to the tune of £17,000 (about ¥3 million) by the British government, which was a gigantic sum in the 19th century.

Despite his genius, and the lavish funding, Babbage couldn't get the machines to work properly. His ideas were ahead of their time and Victorian technology apparently wasn't ready.