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Definition of: Steampunk is a genre that fuses science fiction with 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. This funky industrial retro genre features advanced machines and technology based on the steam power of the 19th century. With its roots going back decades, the Definition of Steampunk has developed a cult following among those who love the intersection of futuristic innovation and old-time mechanical engineering. 

This page will provide a comprehensive Definition of Steampunk, exploring all aspects of this genre. Learn about the history of Steampunk, tracing its origins and influences. Discover the common themes and elements that makeup Steampunk, like airships, clockwork robots, retro-futuristic technology, and Victorian fashion. Examine the essential works and creators who shaped Steampunk into the funky industrial retro genre it is today. From literature to film to art, this product will give you a fascinating Definition of Steampunk.

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Original illustration of Jules Verne's Nautilus engine room
black and white drawing of small house of complex design raised above the surrounding buildings on a turntable
"Maison tourn-ante aérienne" (aerial rotating house) by Albert Robida for his book Le Vingtième Siècle, a 19th-century conception of life in the 20th century

Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.[1][2][3] Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American "Wild West," where steam power remains in mainstream use or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.

Steampunk features anachronistic technologies or retrofuturistic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them — distinguishing it from Neo-Victorianism[4] — and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art.[5] Such technologies may include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.[6] Other examples of steampunk contain alternative-history-style presentations of such technology as steam cannons, lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.[7][8]

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.[9] As a form of speculative fiction, it explores alternative futures or pasts but can also address real-world social issues.[10] The first known appearance of steampunk was in 1987, though it now retroactively refers to many works of fiction created as far back as the 1950s or earlier[11]. A popular subgenre is Japanese steampunk, consisting of steampunk-themed manga and anime,[12] with steampunk elements appearing in mainstream manga since the 1940s.[13]

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.[14] Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and several visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.[15]