Who Coined “Steampunk”? K. W. Jeter’s 1987 Letter to Locus

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Most words for a style arrive in the world without a birth certificate. Steampunk has one: a short letter from a working novelist to a magazine, offered half in jest. We set out below what the letter said, whom it concerned, why it reached for “-punk,” and what it is often credited with that it did not, in fact, do. The reader who wants the larger question of what the word means today will find it in what is steampunk.

I.The Letter That Named Steampunk, in Brief

Jeter sent Locus a copy of his 1979 novel Morlock Night and asked that it be passed to the magazine’s reviewer, Faren Miller, as evidence in a running debate over which of three writers, Powers, Blaylock or Jeter, had first written in a “gonzo-historical” manner¹. He thanked Miller for a flattering review in the March issue, predicted that Victorian fantasies would be the next great thing, and observed that the three of them wanted a fitting collective name: something founded on the technology of the era, like “steampunks,” perhaps¹.

That is the whole of it. The letter is a covering note for a book on its way to a reviewer, and the coinage a throwaway at the close, with a trailing “perhaps”¹. Its full text survives in an academic transcription: Garth Smith’s 2013 thesis at the University of Waikato opens with it and gives the April 1987 Letters section of Locus as its source¹. Karen J. Carlisle’s page quotes the same lines and dates them, likewise, to the April 1987 issue⁴.

A word of caution about the record. No scan of the original magazine page was available to us, and the text rests on that transcription, with partial quotations elsewhere that agree with it¹⁴.

II.The Three Writers Behind the Word

The three writers of the letter were all publishing novels set in a fantastical nineteenth century¹³. Edward Willett describes them as novels in imitation of writers like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne¹².

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction credits Homunculus and The Anubis Gates with fathering steampunk, and allows that Morlock Night may be the first significant steampunk novel⁷³. The Los Angeles Review of Books describes Infernal Devices as part of an ongoing literary exchange among the three⁸.

It must be said that none of these books was written as “steampunk.” The label arrived afterwards and was then applied backwards to them, which is why the list of founding novels sits so comfortably beside an argument about which of them came first.

III.Why "-Punk"?

The jest only answers beside cyberpunk. That label, taken from the title of a 1983 story by Bruce Bethke, was the best-known science-fiction movement of the moment¹⁰⁵. Mike Perschon, writing in the journal Neo-Victorian Studies, reads Jeter’s suffix as a playful qualifier that traded on cyberpunk’s popularity in the 1980s⁵. Dictionary.com’s pop-culture entry likewise describes the coinage as partly in jest⁹.

“Steampunk,” then, exchanges one engine for another: the punks of the computer age, carried back to the age of steam. The dictionaries afterwards recorded precisely that origin. The American Heritage Dictionary defines steampunk as science fiction set in an alternate historical past, especially nineteenth-century England, with advanced technologies usually based on steam power¹¹.

IV.What the Letter Did Not Do

Three things are commonly said of the letter that the record will not bear.

1. It did not name a genre. Jeter wrote “steampunks,” a collective noun for three authors¹. The word as the name of a kind of story came later.
2. It did not invent the sensibility. The books it named are older than the letter, Morlock Night by eight years³. Earlier works, from Wells and Verne to Michael Moorcock’s The Warlord of the Air (1971), have been labelled steampunk after the fact⁵⁸; on these, see steampunk before the word.
3. It did not make the word fashionable at once. We found no history of its usage showing how quickly “steampunk” spread after 1987, and so we make no such claim.

V.The Question of the First Steampunk Novel

Ask who wrote the first steampunk novel and the authorities divide three ways. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction makes the case for Morlock Night³. Dictionary.com holds that The Difference Engine, the 1990 novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, is widely considered the first true steampunk novel⁹. Smith’s thesis calls Moorcock’s The Warlord of the Air arguably one of the first¹.

All three are opinions, and the disagreement is itself a clue to what steampunk is. If the word names Jeter’s circle, the answer is a novel of the late 1970s or the 1980s; if it names a set of tropes, the answer travels wherever the tropes first appear. The safest statement is the one with which we began: the word dates from 1987, and the books it described are older.

VI.From a Jest to a Dictionary Entry

The second sense in the dictionary shows how far the word has traveled. American Heritage gives steampunk a second meaning, an aesthetic style inspired by the fiction¹¹, and that is the sense behind the costumes, the conventions and the brass-and-leather look this Gazette attends to. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes the same extension of the term to clothing, art and manner of life². A throwaway noun for three novelists now names a costume tradition, a culture of makers and a whole shelf of books, films and games.

VII.Frequently Asked Questions

Who invented the word steampunk?

The novelist K. W. Jeter, in a letter printed in the April 1987 issue of Locus magazine¹². The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction thinks it almost certain that he coined it himself³.

What year was steampunk coined?

In 1987: the letter appeared in the Letters section of Locus that April¹². The novels it described reach back to 1979³.

Why is it called steampunk?

It plays upon cyberpunk, the leading science-fiction label of the 1980s, with steam standing in for the computer⁵¹⁰. Jeter proposed a name founded on the technology of the Victorian era¹.

Was steampunk a joke?

In part. Perschon reads the “-punk” suffix as a playful nod to cyberpunk, and Dictionary.com also calls it partly in jest⁵⁹. The letter itself closes the suggestion with “perhaps”¹.

What was the first steampunk book?

The authorities disagree: Morlock Night (1979), The Difference Engine (1990) and The Warlord of the Air (1971) each have their advocates³⁹¹. Any single answer is an opinion.

Who are Tim Powers and James Blaylock?

The two writers whom Jeter named alongside himself in the letter¹. Powers wrote The Anubis Gates (1983) and Blaylock wrote Homunculus (1986), both winners of the Philip K. Dick Award⁶⁷.

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