Hello again everybody and welcome back to my blog! Buckle up and enjoy the ride for this next post.
Recently in Humanities we have been looking at the theme of something called steampunk. We were told we had to use this theme of steampunk on our metaphor machines (post and explanation coming soon!) which got us involved in steampunk in the first place. Here’s a quick definition on steampunk.
In my own words, steampunk is a idea of sorts. It is set in the 19th century and features all technology made out of steam powered machines instead of the technology the world has produced today. Steampunk uses lots of exposed gears and wheels and is normally bronze or gold themed colours.
Steampunk also has a following, of sorts. Lots of people are intrigued by the steampunk genre. There are steampunk festivals, and people really get engaged with the idea of steampunk. They create steampunk themed costumes and bring their own inventions. 
People are also attracted to the steampunk aesthetic. The steampunk aesthetic uses lots of steam and clockwork. People have stretched steampunk to include things like time travel, airships, and mad science as well.
All lot of people are strangely interested in steampunk costumes as well. They like to dress up with goggles, gears and basically anything you could imagine steampunk.
All this attention to a science fiction genre had me and I’m sure a lot of people in my class a bit confused. Why would people want to spend their time going to a festival which the main theme didn’t even exist?
At this point, we were asked to come up with an inquiry question about steampunk. It could have been anything steampunk related. I chose to answer this question: How was the idea of steampunk founded?
For this question I wanted to answer the specifics of it such as who thought of it, when it was thought of, etc..
As it turns out..
Steampunk started out as a small science fiction genre back in the 1970’s. However, the inspiration for steampunk itself stemmed from 19th century writers, most notably Jules Verne and H.G Wells. They wrote books that had the thought of steam-powered technology and they inspired the full-blown steampunk subculture as it is today.
The photo above is from Jules Verne’s novel: 20,000 leagues under the sea.
While we know that these writers inspired steampunk, the actual origins of steampunk are somewhat debated. However, people have taken a very clear conclusion that it was inspired from the Victorian era.
It is known that steampunk started to get more popular in the 1970’s. This is when authors started to write books and graphic novels which the steampunk genre was used.
The term “steampunk” was first coined by K.W Jeter, who used it in a magazine. In this article, he also predicted a uprising of Victorian era fantasies. Funnily enough, he couldn’t have been more correct.
To summarize the answer to my question in one sentence, no one knows who exactly invented steampunk, but it was inspired from the Victorian era and writers in the 70’s made it what it is today.
To conclude:
Steampunk is a aesthetic that lots of people enjoy. Maybe too much.
That will wrap up today’s blog post. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Until next time,
Nik
