Steampunk Books

What You Need to Know

Steampunk is hard to define. It’s old-fashioned with leanings toward the future. Alternate history filled with out-of-place technology. It describes clockwork industrial worlds filled with anachronistic flotsam, brass bits, waistcoats, and goggles. And dirigibles -- steampunk loves dirigibles.

The term, coined in the late 1980s, describes books like The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, pioneers of cyberpunk, set in an alternate Victorian England in the middle of simultaneous social and industrial revolutions with steam-powered technology and mechanical computers.

It’s been a science fiction style for a long time, but the term “Steampunk” defines it, or attempts to. Readers are interested in Steampunk because it’s fun. It’s a romantic adventure. It can be thoughtful even cerebral but it’s got style, attitude. Maybe even a little swagger.

Enjoy the ride.