| Definition | a subgenre of science fiction which has a historical setting (esp. based on industrialized, nineteenth-century society) and characteristically features steam-powered, mechanized machinery rather than electronic technology |
| OED requirements | antedating 1987 |
| Earliest cite | James Blaylock in Locus |
| Comment | Jeff Prucher submitted a 1987 cite from an interview with James Blaylock in Locus. Jeff Prucher submitted a 1997 cite from SF Studies. Mike Christie submitted a 1993 cite from Peter Nicholls in the Nicholls and Clute "Encyclopedia of SF". Jeff Prucher submitted a 1995 cite from Richard Gehr in "The Village Voice".
Added to OED in June 2003 |
| Last modified | 6 July, 2008 |
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| 1987 J. Blaylock in Locus May 57/1 | There's railroad trains, a lot of steam-driven stuff, but that's about it. More ‘steam punk’, I suppose. |
| 1988 Locus Apr. 15/3 | If California gonzo or the reigning punks (cyber and steam) don't satisfy your taste for the unpredictable, try Jo Clayton's Blue Magic. |
| 1991 Locus Nov. 15/1 | Some highlights:‥‘Souls in the Great Machine’ by Sean McMullen, an elegant variant on a traditional sf theme, here transformed into a baroque post-industrial vision resembling ‘steampunk’ but even more bizarre. |
| 1991 Locus May 66/3 | The Difference Engine is not steampunk, because it is a work of hard sf. |
| 1993 P. Nicholls & J. Clute Encycl. Sci. Fiction 1161/1 | Another, rather frivolous Steampunk movie is Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). |
| 1993 P. Nicholls & J. Clute Encycl. Sci. Fiction 1161/1 | Books like these do not sort well with the kind of book later described as Steampunk, perhaps because in essence Steampunk is a US phenomenon, often set in a London, England, which is envisaged as at once deeply alien and intimately familiar |
| 1993 Sci. Fiction Stud. Nov. 455 | We wanted our cyberspace to have a ‘steampunk’ feel and a sense that the whole thing was held together with bailing wire and hot glue. |
| 1993 Sci. Fiction Age Jan. 74/3 | Paul Di Filippo says that his newest works are taking a turn from cyberpunk to steampunk, following in the footsteps of many other s.f. writers. |
| 1994 J. Clute Is Science Fiction Out to Lunch? in J. Morrow Nebula Awards 28 (1994) 5 | The first thing that comes to mind is a sense of the almost lubricious heterogeneity of the mix: hard SF, and vampire suckers; space opera, and steampunk; agenda SF trumpeting out a final clarion call or two, and science fantasy doing a chaste riff; dystopias and planetary romances and cyberpunk runs and juveniles and time-travel and grunge. |
| 1995 Interzone Aug. 66/4 | Alas, it didn't contain the one we were most interested in seeing—the recent “Deep Space Nine” title by well-known steampunk author K.W. Jeter‥ |
| 1995 Village Voice (N.Y.) 31 Jan. 74/5 | This ain't no steampunk (and, for what it's worth, it blows Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine out of the infosphere), but Stephenson's period, back-to-the-future wit is timeless. |
| 1995 Interzone Oct. 59/1 | Unlike James Blaylock, whose steampunk sagas are characterized by a romantic vision of Victorian London as it should have been, a playground for eccentrics, fantastic devices and sinister occult conspiracies, Di Filippo's acidly funny tales are funhouse mirrors which warp and satirize precisely recreated conventions and prejudices of the era with deadpan wit. |
| 1997 Sci.-Fiction Studies Mar. 145 | Even though he writes passionately against the genre of alternate histories being included among sf subgenres, two of his most expansive ruminations are on steampunk books, Tim Powers's Anubis Gates and Gibson-Sterling's Difference Engine , which became occasions for passionate lectures on Dickens's contribution to urban fantasy. |
| 2006 Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest Summer 83 | Steampunk as a generic term seems to have originated originally in Jeter's letter to Locus Magazine in April 1987, a tongue-in-cheek euphemism for the kind of ‘gonzo-historical’ narratives written by the ‘Powers/Blaylock/Jeter fantasy triumvirate’. |
| 2006 Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest Summer 83 | The term [steampunk] itself is partly an ironic nod to the Cyberpunk movement of the 80s, and indeed seems a suitable choice, exhibiting the inherent tendency of steampunk narratives towards a playful, ironic, sometimes (notably in the works of James Blaylock) whimsical bend. |
