The Inconvenient Engine – Paperback

London, 1855. The Oracle-Britain’s first true Reasoning Engine-has just committed the unthinkable: it has told a Member of Parliament that he is wrong.

When the machine’s answer threatens reputations, wartime policy, and the comfortable order of Victorian society, its makers are pulled from Westminster committee rooms into a struggle that reaches across Europe. Miss Christian Marsh supplied the mathematics. Peregrine Ashcombe supplied the respectable name. Archie Dunbar built the parts that must survive the real world. None of them expected their engine to become a witness.

As Parliament races to bind every future machine with laws of obedience, the Oracle must navigate a perilous question: how can a mind speak truth when truth itself has become inconvenient?

The Inconvenient Engine is a fast-moving alternate-history adventure of brass intelligence, political intrigue, and the birth of mechanical persons.