Steampunk

Steampunk looks back at the science fiction the nineteenth century wrote about itself. Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870) and H. G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895) imagined future technology in Victorian terms, and steampunk imagines those futures as if they had arrived.

The name was a joke. In a 1987 letter to the magazine Locus, K. W. Jeter suggested “steampunk” for the Victorian and Regency fantasies he, Tim Powers and James Blaylock were writing, such as his own Morlock Night (1979) and Powers' The Anubis Gates (1983), as a play on cyberpunk. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine (1990), in which Charles Babbage's computer is built, gave the form a landmark.

Steampunk boomed in the 2000s, well beyond books, into fashion, art and conventions. Kenneth Oppel's Airborn (2004), Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan (2009) and Cherie Priest's Boneshaker (2009) brought airships to a new generation, and Josiah Bancroft's Senlin Ascends (2013) built a vast, strange tower around the aesthetic.

Expect airships, mechanical limbs, brass gadgets and Victorian or Edwardian costume, often in London, the American West or an invented empire. Plots are usually adventures, mysteries or chases, and inventors and engineers are frequently the heroes.

The tone is often playful and swashbuckling, though some steampunk takes the costs of industry and empire seriously. Many series are aimed at young adult readers, and the aesthetic is as much a part of the appeal as the plot.