Victorian science fiction soon ceased to be fanciful

One of the more daft but enduring spin-offs of the science fiction genre is steampunk – fiction fashioned with a retrofuturistic love of 19th-century industrial technology. Think of an ironclad of the air, shaped like a fantasy submarine, with six or more propeller engines powered by cogs and levers, funnels pumping out coal smoke from the steam turbines, windows replaced by watch dials, and hundreds of rivets holding the whole thing together. Inside would be a palm court saloon hosting a tea dance. Many of the gentlemen are garbed in comic-book versions of the army officer and entrepreneur style of British imperialism, the ladies in dark velvet, veils and stays, and an orchestra in evening dress and moustachios. Weird eyepieces, top hats and ancient firearms are omnipresent.

The earliest example of steampunk is probably Titus Alone (1959), the third volume of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. But in the early 1980s steampunk became the preferred idiom of a number of American writers, all of whom claimed to have thought it up on their own.