Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates
technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-
powered machinery. Although its literary origins are sometimes associated with
the cyberpunk genre, steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of
the 19th century's British Victorian era or American "Wild West", in a post-
apocalyptic future during which steam power has maintained mainstream usage, or
in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power. Steampunk may, therefore,
be described as neo-Victorian. Steampunk perhaps most recognisably features
anachronistic technologies or retro-futuristic inventions as people in the 19th
century might have envisioned them, and is likewise rooted in the era's
perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art.Such technology may
include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules
Verne, or the modern authors Philip Pullman, Scott Westerfeld, Stephen Hunt and
China Miéville. Other examples of steampunk contain alternative history-style
presentations of such technology as lighter-than-air airships, analogue
computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical
Engine.
Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy,
horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative
fiction, making it often a hybrid genre. The first known appearance of the term
steampunk was in 1987, though it now retroactively refers to many works of
fiction created even as far back as the 1950s or 1960s.
Steampunk also refers to any of the artistic styles, clothing fashions, or
subcultures, that have developed from the aesthetics of steampunk fiction,
Victorian-era fiction, art nouveau design, and films from the mid-20th
century.Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual
artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of
visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.
