Is Steam Punk a Genre? Why or Why Not?

I've seen a lot of people around here saying that steam punk isn't technically its own genre. So, here's my question for all you Wrimos, why isn't steam punk a genre? I am writing a departure from my typical YA fiction this year, and thus far, I would consider it steam punk. Is that technically wrong? I have long enjoyed the "genre" of steam punk, and I'm not sure how else to classify it. I've seen people say that it should be classified under fantasy or sci-fi, but I would argue that it's neither, as it is not characterized with magic and dragons, or futurism and technology.

Help me solve this quandary! thanks very much!

A "genre" is a very hard thing to pin down, and in practice means little more than what shelf your book ends up on in Barnes and Noble. (It's a little more complicated--and consequential--than that, but you get my point; genre tends to be fairly arbitrary.)

I'd describe steampunk as an "aesthetic" rather than a genre--it's a set of stylistic and functional conventions, a look and a storytelling style and some thematic norms. In this sense, it's akin to something like Regency Romance, Noir, Modernism, or Beat. It doesn't necessarily even need to be "speculative"--a historically-accurate novel set during the height of the industrial revolution with an emphasis on the technological advances of the era and the right stylistic flair could potentially fit into Steampunk.

Possibly the answer is "not yet", the same way that "paranormal romance" didn't use to be.

I'd say its a setting; you could have a romantic comedy in it, a drama...
It's like if a story is set in the future, it's not always sciencefiction.

Personally, I see like, family trees of genre.

Steampunk and fantasy are both the offspring of sci-fi. And I see sci-fi as any fiction not currently possible in the real world.

But that's just me.

Classifying it as scifi makes the most sense to me, because it's taking science and doing fictional things with it, usually. The prototypical sort of steampunk works are all science fiction, like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and so on. Basically, instead of futuristic technology, you have historistic technology. However, there's steampunk stuff that I'd say would more likely fall in the genre of alternate history, because the technology isn't in a very big role but instead other aspects of a society like that. It's up to the discretion of the writer to put it in whichever category they please.

That said, it definitely is a subgenre, and that also definitely makes sense. With genres like scifi or fantasy, you really need the subgenres to give people any kind of idea what you're writing. After all, scifi can range from really hard scifi with actual math in it to space operas where the setting is merely a secondary feature, and fantasy goes all the way from medieval-style high fantasy to urban speculative fiction. So yeah, it makes sense to call steampunk a genre in that sense, because it gives people a better picture of what you're doing, but it also fills the criteria for being scifi. That's why I personally classify it as a subgenre to that, or possibly sometimes alternate history, like I mentioned.

The problem with not separating out steampunk from everything else, though, is that it really doesn't seem to have anything in common with sci-fi or fantasy, in the practice. Sure, it's speculative fiction with a good shake of historical fiction in most cases... but we have no metal walls with rivets or crawling space suburbs. Steampunk has no dragons or dwarves, swords or castles or space travel (though sure, we can steal anything we want of the above).

On average, people who want to talk about steampunk are going for something entirely different than the sorts of topics that come up in the sci-fi or in the fantasy forums; too fantastical to be history, too unscientific for scifi, too much mad science for fantasy. So I'm in favor of splitting them out from the rest.

Assuming that science fiction is only about certain things and fantasy is only about certain other things is taking a quite inaccurately limited view of those genres.

Really, when it comes down to it, classifying "genres" is like taxonomy. You have on the one side, "realistic" genres, and on the other side, "fantastic" genres. The "realistic" genres tend to get classified by their plots, while the "fantastic" genres tend to get classified by their settings. The result is that if you have a mystery taking place on a space station, it's going to get shoved under "science fiction" because it's "not real".

And the main difference between the various "fantastic" genres is, effectively, the paint scheme. You take your "thing that doesn't exist in real life" and call it magic, and you have fantasy. You paint it over with technobabble and blinkenlights, and you have fantasy. You give it cogs and steam power, and it's steampunk. But when it comes down to it, it still does the same thing.

I say that steampunk is its own genre. It's not specifically a subset of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, or romance. It can contain elements of any one of them (or more). What is specific to steampunk is the alternate Victorian setting.

I spoke up about it in the Suggestions forum but pretty much got shot down. It's never going to get its own forum.

I'm going to be writing a zombie novel this year, but last year I wrote a science fiction steampunk novel.

I thought steampunk STARTED as a literary genre?? I'm very confused now. What Mariana describes is basically what I thought it was supposed to be. I've been told that the steampunk literary genre doesn't even usually have the aesthetics that the steampunk fashion does, so to say "steampunk is an aesthetic rather than a genre" doesn't make sense.

I'd say it's become a genre, and those of us who write it understand why it's a genre. But I do get why every genre can't have its own dedicated forum. I think Steampunk should stick here in Other Genres and just resist being shifted elsewhere on general principles.

so... uhm is Steampunk under 'Other' or under Fantasy for forums? I didn't see any threads for it on here at least. I've been into SP for a long time, and this is not just a jump on the 'hot' wagon thing.

There's steampunk threads in fantasy if your particular steampunk has fantasy elements. There's ones in scifi if your steampunk has more scifi elements. And it's not like there's anything preventing you from starting a dedicated steampunk discussion thread in "other genres"... I don't get why people posted threads on "magical realism" and "steampunk" complaining about their "genre-ness" or some such, instead of just posting a discussion thread on them and perhaps including that in the discussion... O.o

As a Steampunk Cosplayer, and Crewmember of an up and coming Steampunk RPG tabletop game, I certainly say that Steampunk is a Genre. It has it's own rules, which, while loose, do have common themes and views. Steampunk doesn't have to be Victorian, Neo-Victorian or even post-apocalyptic, it can even be here and now. I even know some people who have BUILT working machines that use only steam and do much of the same things the electric ones do. (Steam powered sewing machine anyone?) While Steampunk shares some traits with Fantasy and Sci-fi and Romance and too many others to list, that doesn't mean that it's not it's own Genre. Supernatural is it's own, to most people, and it started out as a sub Genre of Fantasy and Sci-fi. Genres form around the Idea, not the other way around.

I'll have to vote on the side of Steampunk being its own genre. You could class it as Victorian Sci Fi, but, as others have pointed out, you can easily have a Steampunk story on a world that never knew Queen Victoria. Steampunk is a place where fantasy and technology meet. Everything is new and raw and accessible. You can have a daring scientist, a magic weilding mechanic, secret societies, and arcane wisdom from a lost savage race. About the only thing you can't have is digital technology. Aether power, yes. iPhones? Not so much.

Doc

*clears throat*

Let us begin with Ronald Clark's "Queen Victoria's Bomb." This is probably one of the first recognizable pieces from what later became known as Steampunk.

As a concept, Steampunk began as a particular type of alternate history written in the Hard Science Fiction category. Meaning that the intention was to question science, its ramifications, and its future implications. Only in this particular thread it decided to do so about past -- almost entirely -- incomplete or little known technology.

That is typically considered First Wave Steampunk. Thus the original works in the genre are Hard Science Fiction. So yes it was a genre. And a very specific one.

However, one must include works like "Morlock Night" and "Anubis Gates" which began to incorporate not only secret history stories but also historical or literary figures. Nearly every piece after this includes someone (Kelvin, Babbage, Edison, etc.). These pieces were more socially-minded than the Hard Science Fiction, but they still fit within the themes that were already being established.

After the coining of the term in '87 by Jeter, we have a minor turning point where works within this theme became unified by a single describing term -- one that is admittedly tongue-in-cheek -- as well as becoming a self-realized sub-genre of science fiction. The only two major pieces that came after this that still used traditional Hard Science Fiction themes were "The Difference Engine" (1990) and "Lord Kelvin's Machine" (1992).

It is my opinion that later works -- those works after the term was coined -- began to analyze and evaluate those earlier works, scrutinize their tropes, and then manipulate them in such a way as to create a different sort of idea behind them. In this way, Steampunk began to take on the idea of being an aesthetic, rather than a genre. In other words, it began to be placed on top of other genres as a back-drop or setting, much like Noir is.

This began the Second Wave of Steampunk.

The first of these works were "Anti-Ice" and "The Steampunk Trilogy."

It is also after this point that works began to take place in either another world (i.e., secondary world) or in a nondescript "otherworld" (meaning simply that it is set in a sort of no-place). A lot of these were short works in the mid- to late-90's and bleed into the early 2000's.

It has been since about the mid-2000's that the genre has taken a very wide-shot approach to things and latched on to the notion of it being an aesthetic, with works like "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters," "Mainspring," "Boneshaker," and "Court of the Air." All of these are decidedly Steampunk, but they are all very different books with wildly disparate themes. One could even throw in "Perdido Street Station" as pseudo-Steampunk and add even more flavor.

The point of all of this is to say that Steampunk is complex. To understand it, one must study it, because it's way more than just airships and goggles and the Victorian age. If the only thing that appeals to you is the fanciful clothes and the gadgets, then you need to reconsider your approach. At its core, and this applies to nearly every piece of Steampunk that I've read (and that list is very long), the genre questions the world around it, especially in regards to the science and technology in that world. Even as Fantasy-feeling as "Court of the Air" is, it still has a sense of technology inquiry; and even as burdened by zombies as "Boneshaker" is, it still questions a particular machine.

*takes a deep breath*

I'm better now.

I think I would consider Steampunk a Sub-genre. Like Fantasy Steampunk, Science Steampunk, Horror Steampunk, ect.

It may eventually end up as its own genre, but it will probably still be small and contained.

I personally would call it "historical fantasy"

@ E.M. Jeanmougin:

But that goes back to the notion that if you consider genre like that, then at least one main stream genre needs to go to a corner and die.





and to wombatrider:

But my steampunk stuff isn't set on earth, so how is it historical? And I am seeing this crop up more and more now as the idea of steampunk takes hold.

Hmmm....

After reading through all the posts, I think ElizaWyatt's sums it up nicely:

The problem with not separating out steampunk from everything else, though, is that it really doesn't seem to have anything in common with sci-fi or fantasy, in the practice. Sure, it's speculative fiction with a good shake of historical fiction in most cases... but we have no metal walls with rivets or crawling space suburbs. Steampunk has no dragons or dwarves, swords or castles or space travel (though sure, we can steal anything we want of the above).

On average, people who want to talk about steampunk are going for something entirely different than the sorts of topics that come up in the sci-fi or in the fantasy forums; too fantastical to be history, too unscientific for scifi, too much mad science for fantasy. So I'm in favor of splitting them out from the rest.

Deciding whether steampunk is a genre or a subset or an aesthetic really speaks to how you individually view those classifications. Meaning, unfortunately, it's totally subjective.

However, I don't think a "genre" should be defined by how or how many books are sold in your local big-box-book-store.

There is no official genre-naming committee out there, bequeathing titles onto up-and-coming areas of interest. It would be nice to think so, and that's why it's easy to look at marketing to be the deciding factor as to whether it's considered a true "genre" or not...but it's simply not the case.

So for me, I do see steampunk as a separate genre because when I describe it to people, I use the term "steampunk" to help illuminate a very set number of things you can expect from my novel which — and this is the important part — you couldn't expect to find in any other fiction classification. At one point, steampunk may have fallen under scifi or fantasy due to its relative obscurity. But it's not that case anymore. Steampunk is everywhere: from fiction to movies to music to cosplay. That's a genre.

And never once have I described my YA steampunk novel to someone as a science fiction or fantasy novel. It never crossed my mind. If anything, I clarify the type of steampunk that it is — ya adventure steampunk, much like Alice down a copper-lined rabbithole — so you could say that I am assigning a subset to this genre.

I think this may have something to do with conflicting viewpoints on science fiction in the literary world. In the past, Science Fiction was the genre, no exceptions. If you wrote anything outside of romance, historical, humor, biographical, mystery (you may fill in your own sweeping terms), then it was automatically lumped in with Science Fiction. But I think there is so much vibrant growing diversity, the poorly dubbed "Science" Fiction simply doesn't fit any more. I would be more in favor of "Fantasy" but even that is subjective: Isn't all writing that's not based in historical fact merely fantasy?

So, back to my original point, I think Steampunk is a genre not in how I view it, but in how I find myself using the term to more accurately describe what I'm writing. There is no other word that fits. Neither Fantasy nor Science Fiction, with all their respective baggage, adequately does the job. I'm writing Steampunk.