Steampunk has been a very unique genre of fiction to me. A lot of steampunk stories are set in the past, but are futuristic for many different reasons. This has always been so interesting to me, so I decided to learn about the origins of the steampunk genre.

So firstly, the name. It seems like the creator just took two random words and made them a name. Here, I’ll do one, “Fryingpier”. Yea, no. The origin comes from the word cyberpunk (coined by Bruce Bethke), as sort of a tongue-in-cheek reference. They just replaced cyber with steam, because a lot of things back then used steam power.

But who created the genre? Well, the American author K.W. Jeter was the first person to coin the term, in his novel Morlock Night (inspired by H.G. Wells creature the “Morlock”). He used the term to describe a genre of speculative fiction in which steam drove technological advancements, not electricity.

The steampunk genre has inspirations all the way back to 19th century Victorian authors, such as Jules Verne (author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) and H.G. Wells (author of the Time Machine). Steampunk also plucked from a genre known as Dime Novels. Dime Novels were much cheaper than most other books, because the author likely put less time and effort into them. These books often had melodramatic (exaggerated or over emotional) romance and adventure, and were often targeted towards lower income readers and those with less sophisticated taste.

Well, now I know a bit more about steampunk. I now know about the origins of the name, the first person to use the name, and even some of the inspirations for the genre.