Steampunk: The subgenre of science fiction that fuses past with the present
Imagine this: You are in the present, but there’s no electricity, instead everything is run by steam. Also, there’s no fast fashion, instead people always dress up in fancy outfits and carry pocket watches with them. Are you wondering where have you landed? In a steampunk fiction, a sub-genre of literature inspired by the Victorian Age, the one you see in any Charles Dickens novel that you pick up. In this literary genre, writers often imagine a world that combines retro futuristic technology with Victorian lifestyle and aesthetics, but the setting is the present.
Turns out, this genre emerged out of science fiction and has been in existence since the 1970s. The inspiration? 19th century industrial steam-powered machinery. Having a hard time to grasp the idea? Well, try visualising this: A fictional character is living in the same space and time as you. The only difference is that while you wear jeans and shirt and carry a smartphone, he wears a long Victorian coat and uses analogue computers and cars powered by visible cogs, gears and steam.
Who inspired the steampunk movement?
Today’s steampunk authors derive their inspiration from the works of Victorian greats such as Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde. Moreover, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein also deserve special mention for encouraging the steampunk literature. Not only these, the 19th century ‘dime novel’ or the paperback melodramatic novel (with romance and adventure as main subjects), that was both cheap and popular among the common mass is also known to have influenced the steampunk genre.
Popular steampunk fictions
For those unaware, science fiction evolved in the 19th century in the hands of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Although the term steampunk emerged only in 1987, thanks to science fiction author K.W. Jeter, it was years before that the first steampunk novel was actually published. It was Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone (1959). Another popular example of steampunk literature is Michael Moorcook’s 1971 novel The Warlord of the Air.
Interestingly, when Jeter coined the term, he was actually looking for a general term to describe his own works such as Morlock Night (1979) and Infernal Devices (1987), alongside the works of his contemporaries such as The Anubis Gates (1983) by Tim Powers and Homunculus (1986) by James Blaylock. What’s common about all these novels is that all of them are set in the 20th century but imitate Victorian conventions.