When steam technology and fantasy collide, must the result be steampunk, or is the presence of a level of Victoriana or dystopianism a must? Is there a level of steam powered gadgets that must exist, or does steam always mean steampunk? For example, let's take a standard fantasy world and invent the steam engine, and make it used heavily all over the world. We will limit this engine to trains, ships, power plants, and other URL steam devices. No hyper capable airships, no power suit, no automatons. Do we have steampunk here, or just a world with steam tech? If we add those really cool airships, is it steampunk yet? When will it become steampunk?
Wow. This question is almost too easy. It becomes steampunk when the population of the world takes on a nature that is sufficiently 'punky'!!!
You're right to make the distinctions though. Steampunk is not the same as 'airship' technology which is not the same as 'clockwork' technology... And 'era's are completely separate from all of the above terms. You can have world war 2 era steampunk or victorian era clockwork with no steam...
But in its simplest terms to ask what makes it steampunk? Why it must simply be an envoronment where steam technology is a prevalent form of something common, and the culture by and large is 'punky' whether that means victorian punky, british 70's punky, german punky, late 80's american punky... pants with belts to hold them up around the radius of your upper thigh thuggalo or effeminate frosted haired scrawny men in salmon colored jeggings.
Punky by nature is a style of affectation that combines the elements of ramshackle tossed together from spare parts fashion and extreme image by way of wonkiness. Big hair, asymmetrical style... Bold colorations, brass fittings... functional or no... Like the visual fashion version of Jazz. Unrestrained and unhampered, unfrowned upon or criticized uniqueness of personal style.
Thats when you're punk. Throw a little steam in there and you're good to go.
Punky from a technological or cultural standpoint would be applying the same 'freeform ramshackle jazz metaphor to your architecture and engineering... A clothing store will have 9000 things hanging on the racks and no two of them are alike. There's to 'pre fab housing' where your neighbor 3 doors down has the exact same floorplan as you... No car looks like anyone elses car. It is your duty in any punk era to turn anything 'common' into your own unique signature of personal style. You gotta make your mark. Gotta separate yourself from the herd. Even if the only mark you can make is to buy plain old canvas shoes and use them as your 'canvas'.
I think this explains it nicely, especially the part about styles not being mass produced.
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When steam technology and fantasy collide, must the result be steampunk, or is the presence of a level of Victoriana or dystopianism a must? Is there a level of steam powered gadgets that must exist, or does steam always mean steampunk? For example, let's take a standard fantasy world and invent the steam engine, and make it used heavily all over the world. We will limit this engine to trains, ships, power plants, and other URL steam devices. No hyper capable airships, no power suit, no automatons. Do we have steampunk here, or just a world with steam tech? If we add those really cool airships, is it steampunk yet? When will it become steampunk?Most what people call steampunk is pretty much an abomination when set to the standards of William Gibson's original defining work for the genre, "The Difference Engine". Steampunk is not an excuse for things such as the giant mecha of the Wild Wild West movie. The zeitgeist of steampunk is about information and it's control. And "The Difference Engine" sums it up totally well.
The central idea of steampunk is that an information based apparatus is developed before the invention of electronics, vacuum tubes, and the transistor, and the idea is that Charles Babbage actually got to build his proposed Difference Engine which would have been a steam powered monstrosity about the size of Madison Square Garden in Europe, and that it's information processing capability would be coupled with the use of telegraph which was already in existence at the time. In Gibson's novel these Engines are used to manipulate state and corporate records and create false Passports which enable their users to travel freely until the passports fail a check at a border crossing. And that's essentially it. But as Gibson shows in his novel... that's more than enough to create true power.
That is an amazingly specific example, and I am not sure any author or layperson would say Steampunk = only babbage devices
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Most what people call steampunk is pretty much an abomination when set to the standards of William Gibson's original defining work for the genre, "The Difference Engine". Steampunk is not an excuse for things such as the giant mecha of the Wild Wild West movie. The zeitgeist of steampunk is about information and it's control. And "The Difference Engine" sums it up totally well.
This is.... astonishingly focused. I also disagree. Just as a simple point of disagreement, K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices was the first self-identified "steampunk" novel, and Jeter himself is given credit for inventing the term, three years before Gibson's Difference Engine. Lord Kelvin's Machine and the two predecessor novels, by James Blaylock, are also generally considered to be an early example of the genre (in fact, they're usually called the Steampunk trilogy), and depending upon how much excavation you do, there's some work from the 1960s that might qualify.
But however one defines steampunk, it's not limited to Gibson or to Babbage-tech.
The best description that I can come up with is that it's cyberpunk without the cyber and using technology from the steam age. Basically a combination of dystopian fiction, 19th century technology applied in an SF way, and deliberately anachronistic themes. The Difference Engine illustrates this beautifully, but doesn't define it; I share Wikipedia's belief that the graphic novels The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the various Girl Genius volumes are excellent examples of the genre, and information technology is largely irrelevant to those stories.
As with many neologisms, Steampunk is a hard thing to define because it has a cloudy origin. When he first made it up in his letter to Locus, Jeter spoke of "Victorian Fantasies" as the target of the term.
At the same time, he later spoke of how he made the term by replacing the "Cyber-" in "Cyberpunk", thus leading to the notion that the -punk aspect must also be present, though I'm not sure he ever specifically said so.
Since then, the term seems to be used in a broad sense to refer to pretty much anything where Victorian notions of science and technology are predominant; sometimes not even that is required, but rather merely the presence of machinery with noticeable clockwork and chimneys.
The problem is, whether that is correct or not is difficult to contest, since from what I understand the term was defined per the literary works it refered to, rather than specific concepts or styles. Thus, while the -punk suffix and the term that inspired it would suggest a dystopian, dark, "Fight Against the Man" attitude, I'm not sure we can actually restrict the term to that.
Personally, though, I like to use it that way, reserving Steampunk for works of Victorian Science Fiction where there is a focus put on the problematic aspects of technology colliding with a society still crawling out from the agricultural dependencies of the First Industrial Revolution, while using Steampulp for those that, while also being Victorian Science Fiction, focus on the Gentleman Adventurer and Wondrous Age of Technology aspect (which, if I have to be honest, is my prefered take on the theme. I've never really liked dystopian settings).
Thats sort of my point really. I think that's the defining line... You could have 'dystopian victorian era' and 'steam technology' as a setting, and it still wouldn't be 'steampunk' because it's missing the punk...
You have to define your terms...
Victorian era alone isnt steampunk but steampunk can be victorian era.
Dystopian isnt steampunk but steampunk can be dystopian.
Once you know that victorian era can be punk or not punk or distopian or not distopian
Once you know that dystopian can be punk or not punk, victorian or not victorian...
You're good to go...
The OP's question ends up being 'which characteristics define' steampunk, and for that the important part is keeping the concepts straight...
The steam in steampunk refers to a prevalent technology powered by steam
The punk in steampunk refers to a culture of unrestrained and uncriticized personal expression.
The intersection of those two bubbles on the venn diagram is 'steampunk'
Having dystopian themes doenst necessarily require a punk culture. It's its own separate bubble on the venn diagram.
Having clockwork doenst necessarily mean steam technology and doesnt defacto require a punk culture. It's also its own separate bubble in your venn diagram that may or may not intersect.
The rich people from Hunger games arent steampunk. For one they're not steam. For another their 'ramshackle victorian fashion' is not done without critique... Its done for the specific purpose of showing off to other rich elite... The point of punk is not have that unrestrained level of artistic expression without CARING what other people think about your fashion choices. The elite from hunger games dress up fancy for the specific purpose of impressing their friends with their ourrageousness. Punk dresses up fancy for personal edification and expression alone with no thought given to how it will make others react. Is the setting dystopian? sure... Is the fasion victorian era? Sure. Is it steamy or punky? No.
The op's point is to clarify what concepts fit in to what spheres...
if you understand what dystopian means
and you understand what steam technology means
If you understand what victorian era means
then you're almost good to go... All you need to complete the puzzle is to understand what 'punk' is... and thats what I tried covering above...
I'm all for anecdotes and citing various authors who pioneered the concept to help clarify the discussion or establish some foundations, but to understand where 'the lines are drawn between steampunk and not steampunk', I think once you get a clear definition of the terms, the answer to the OP's question sorts itself out quite easily. Jeter and Babbage didnt 'invent' punk culture any more than the Fonze invented 'cool culture'... The question isn't about the origins of steampunk. Its about the definition of steampunk. To get there you must clearly define both steam and punk, neither of which are the exclusive baliwick of Babbage and Jeter.
