What Is Steampunk? The Look, the Stories and Where the Word Came From

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The question looks simple and is not. Ask a bookseller, a costumer and a university lecturer what steampunk is, and three courteous but different answers will come back: a shelf of novels, a manner of dress, a way of thinking about machines. All three are right, and this page, the front door to the Gazette, sets out how they fit together. It describes the look, the stories and the community, takes the quarrels fairly, and then points the reader to the guide that answers the next question. The guides are listed at the foot of the page.

I.What the Dictionaries Say

The reference works agree upon the core and part company over the edges.

Note how the second sense in American Heritage, the aesthetic style, is the one that governs shop windows and convention halls. Perschon records that the Oxford definition’s insistence on a nineteenth-century setting has been set aside by newer adherents who treat steampunk as a culture rather than a literary category². The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction likewise notes that the term has been extended to clothing, art and manner of life³.

II.Genre, Look or Community?

The shifting between these meanings is the chief source of argument. The author Jay Kristoff, writing in 2011, named three everyday senses: a genre of speculative fiction, a subculture, and a mindset or philosophy⁷. Garth Smith’s 2013 thesis goes further and proposes that steampunk is better seen as an aesthetic that can be laid over any genre than as a genre itself¹. His authority is Perschon’s doctoral work, which identifies three aspects: retrofuturism, the neo-Victorian, and technofantasy¹.

Retrofuturism is the future as the past imagined it. The neo-Victorian is the modern habit of reinventing the nineteenth century. Technofantasy is the licence to invent machines that never worked. Between them these terms explain why a Zeppelin-borne adventure, a brass keyboard and a corseted tea party are all called steampunk without any of them being much like the others.

Nor is the setting fixed. Edward Willett describes the usual period as after the Industrial Revolution and before electricity, with variants that include fantasy steampunk, steampunk set in the future, and “gaslight” works that lean toward the supernatural⁸. The scholar Jess Nevins, as reported by Smith, observed that the label is applied to everything from a space-western television series to a band’s industrial dance music and mock-Victorian fashion¹. Of this elasticity the critic Brian J. Robb is quoted by Smith as saying that most people “know it when they see it”¹.

III.The Look: Machinery Worn Openly

If one idea unites the stories and the fashion, it is the visible mechanism. Perschon writes that in steampunk the technology is laid bare, brass clock gears exposed to the viewer, and that its machines are matters of aesthetic form rather than scientific function². Smith adds a motive: a reaction against the “black box” technology of the present, in which a broken part is invisible and the device inscrutable, and a return to a time when a snapped chain or a ruptured boiler could be seen and understood¹. The look is a protest in brass.

The materials that follow are familiar: brass and copper, leather, glass, wood, rivets, gauges, gears and clockwork. The reader who wishes to see how a designer assembles them will find the full inventory in the steampunk aesthetic, and the vocabulary a newcomer will meet at a first gathering in the steampunk glossary. Costume is the subject of steampunk clothing, and a room dressed in the manner is treated in steampunk decor.

A Word on Goggles

The accessory most associated with the look is the pair of goggles, and it is also the most anachronistic. Smith reports that the first recorded mention of goggles dates from 1903, in connection with Charles Manly and Langley’s aerodrome, though fans associate them with the Victorian era¹. The “golden age of airships” fell, in the same way, after the death of Victoria¹. The explanation of why the symbol took hold is in why goggles mean steampunk, and the practical advice in steampunk goggles. That the look is not strictly Victorian is no fault; it is a fair warning that steampunk is a picture of the Victorians, not a record of them.

IV.The Stories: Where the Word Came From

The word has a birth certificate, which few styles can claim. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction records it as coined by K. W. Jeter in a letter to Locus in April 1987, and thinks it almost certain that Jeter invented it himself³⁴. He was seeking a collective name for the Victorian fantasies written by himself, Tim Powers and James Blaylock, and he reached for something founded on the technology of the age¹. The model was cyberpunk, the leading science-fiction label of the day, and Perschon reads the suffix as a joke at its expense². What the letter said, and did not say, is set out at length in who coined steampunk; we do not repeat it here.

The books it named are older than the word. Jeter’s Morlock Night (1979) is a sequel by another hand to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine⁴; Powers’s The Anubis Gates (1983) sends a time traveler to London in 1810 and won the 1984 Philip K. Dick Award²⁹; Blaylock’s Homunculus (1986) is the first of the Langdon St. Ives tales, in a Dickensian London of alchemy and airships³⁰; and Jeter’s Infernal Devices (1987) opens the George Dower sequence⁴. The Encyclopedia credits Homunculus and The Anubis Gates with fathering steampunk, and allows that Morlock Night may be the first significant steampunk novel³⁰⁴. Dictionary.com holds that The Difference Engine (1990), by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, is widely considered the first true steampunk novel⁶. These are opinions, and we offer no verdict on which is “first”.

The Ancestors

Steampunk is rich in ancestors that were labeled after the fact. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says the television series The Wild Wild West (CBS, 1965 to 1969) can be seen as anticipating the style²⁶, and describes the interior of Verne’s Nautilus as prefiguring it³³. British scientific romance, the early science fiction of Wells and his contemporaries, is its literary forebear without being steampunk itself²⁸. Perschon notes that the term has been applied retroactively to Keith Roberts’s Pavane, to Michael Moorcock’s The Warlord of the Air, and even to Wells and Verne, and that one encyclopedia complained that every fantasy dealing with the gaslight period gets the label². The longer account is in steampunk before the word. The reader who wants an orderly reading list will find it in the steampunk reading list, and the whole shelf of print, screen and play in steampunk books, films and games.

V.The Makers Take Over

For nearly twenty years the word described a literary curiosity. Then, in the middle of the 2000s, it left the page. The historian Scott Marler dates a “second wave” of steampunk, with a community of its own, to about 2006, and describes the result as a material culture of DIY making, costume and craft⁹. Dictionary.com dates the first steampunk convention, SalonCon, to the same year⁶. Jeff VanderMeer, as Perschon reports him, observed that the subculture did not come to steampunk through the literature, that it arose largely independent of it, and that it is closely allied with DIY culture².

Several names mark the transition. Jake von Slatt of the Steampunk Workshop, who describes his output as nineteenth-century style with modern technology, was called in a July 2007 article perhaps the foremost exponent of the aesthetic on the Web²³³¹. Richard Nagy, who worked as Datamancer, began in a New Jersey garage, and his first piece, a Victorian brass keyboard built with von Slatt, put typewriter keycaps on a modern keyboard²². The band Abney Park, of Seattle, reports on its own site that it adopted “Steampunk” as a descriptor in 2005, which helped build a music subculture²⁴. Their stories, and others’, are told in the makers who defined the look.

The museums took notice. The Museum of the History of Science at Oxford ran a show from 13 October 2009 to 21 February 2010, curated by Art Donovan, which the museum billed as the first museum exhibition of steampunk art; its own page gives attendance as over 70,000¹¹. The museum’s annual report for 2010 to 2011 credits the exhibition with making the previous year’s attendance exceptional¹².

The reader inclined to make rather than buy will find the projects, graded by skill, in steampunk DIY. The gatherings are listed, with the ones that ended, in steampunk conventions and festivals, and the most ambitious sort of build in steampunk cars.

VI.Steampunk and Its Neighbors

Most of the “-punk” family is named for a power source or an era, and the shorthand is serviceable. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is the authority for most of the following.

The field guide just named is a general-interest site and we offer it as color rather than authority. The comparisons are made at length in steampunk versus dieselpunk, cyberpunk and gaslamp, and the newer family members in the -punk family tree.

VII.Two Quarrels Worth Knowing

“Just Glue Gears on It”

The commonest complaint within the community is that a good deal of what is sold as steampunk is a modern object with ornament attached. Catherynne Valente, as quoted by Smith, urged that steampunk be about more than steam, that the technology be taken seriously and whole, and that one avoid gluing gears to one’s person and calling it a costume¹. Von Slatt himself joked about the practice when he announced the end of his steampunk projects in 2016²⁷. The test, then, is whether the object suggests a mechanism or merely decorates itself with one. The question is taken up properly in what makes a costume or object steampunk.

The Empire

The second quarrel is graver. The Victorian age was also the age of empire, and a style that adores its machinery may be suspected of adoring its conquests. Kurian Therakath Peter, in Neo-Victorian Studies, finds two Western steampunk novels steeped in colonial nostalgia, while contrasting a graphic novel that takes history more seriously²¹. Cory Gross distinguishes a nostalgic steampunk, concerned with an idea of the past, from a melancholic one, which presents a de-romanticized alternate history²⁰. Perschon reports the author G. D. Falksen’s observation that fans may like the grandeur of the British Empire without accepting the racism and colonialism upon which it was built². Steamfunk and silkpunk, named above, were in part answers to the objection¹⁹³². We set out the argument as fairly as we can in steampunk and the empire.

VIII.Is It Still Alive?

The mainstream moment passed. Marler recalls that a 2013 forecast called steampunk the next big thing, that commercial interest followed, including a fashion campaign, and that the moment did not last long⁹. A 2019 survey by Nick Ottens of American events found that, of eight organizers who replied, two reported growth, five a decline and one a steady count; he notes that the sample may not be representative¹³. Against this, the Northumbria scholar Claire Nally argued in 2016 that subcultures were diversifying rather than declining, and cited steampunk attendance growing inside goth weekends at Whitby¹⁰. A twelfth Wild Wild West Steampunk Convention was announced for Tucson in 2024¹⁴.

We therefore say what the evidence allows: smaller and more scattered than its peak, and still active. We have found no reliable count of fans or of sales, and give none. The question has a page of its own in is steampunk still popular.

IX.Where to Begin

The reader’s next step depends upon the reader’s purpose.

• To dress the part: steampunk clothing, at three budgets, or how to dress steampunk for a first outfit.
• To make something: steampunk DIY, from an afternoon’s project to a season’s.
• To furnish a room: steampunk decor.
• To read or watch: steampunk books, films and games.
• To give a present: steampunk gifts.

Some of these pages link to products on Amazon, and the Gazette earns a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to the reader; the affiliate disclosure explains how the arrangement works.

X.Guides in This Section

• Who coined “steampunk”? K. W. Jeter’s 1987 letter to Locus
• Steampunk before the word: Verne, Wells and the Victorians it borrows from
• Steampunk vs dieselpunk, cyberpunk and gaslamp
• The steampunk aesthetic: materials, colors and the details that sell it
• A steampunk glossary
• Is steampunk still popular? What the evidence says
• Why goggles mean steampunk
• The -punk family tree: silkpunk, steamfunk, clockpunk and solarpunk
• “Just glue gears on it”: what makes a costume or object steampunk
• Steampunk and the empire: the colonial-nostalgia argument
• Datamancer, Jake von Slatt and the makers who defined the look
• Steampunk cars: the real builds

XI.Frequently Asked Questions

What is steampunk in simple terms?

Fiction set in an alternate nineteenth century, usually Victorian England, with advanced machines run chiefly on steam; by extension, the brass-and-leather style inspired by it⁵. It is both a kind of story and a look.

What does steampunk mean in fashion?

It means Victorian and Edwardian clothing mixed with visible machinery: goggles, gears, corsets, waistcoats and tools. The dictionary’s second sense, an aesthetic style inspired by the fiction, is the one that applies⁵³.

Is steampunk a genre or an aesthetic?

Both, and scholars disagree about the emphasis. Garth Smith argues that it is better seen as an aesthetic that can be applied to any genre¹, while the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction treats it as a subgenre that later acquired a wider sense³.

Is steampunk always Victorian?

No. The usual setting is Victorian or Edwardian England, but Tim Powers’s The Anubis Gates is set in 1810, and Smith notes that much steampunk takes place in alternate worlds or the present²⁹¹.

Where does the word steampunk come from?

From a 1987 letter by K. W. Jeter to Locus, modeled on the word cyberpunk³². The full account is on the page on who coined steampunk.

What is the difference between steampunk and dieselpunk?

Steampunk draws on the nineteenth century and its steam and clockwork; dieselpunk on the interwar years and after³¹⁵. See steampunk vs dieselpunk.

Is steampunk still popular?

It is smaller than at its peak and still active: conventions continue, and scholars describe a diversifying subculture¹⁴¹⁰. There is no reliable count of fans¹³.

Sources