If you read my last blog post “Lets Show The British Who’s Boss” then you know about the Rube Goldburg machine that me and a group of my peers need to make. If you don’t, the link is at the bottom of this post (I highly suggest reading it).

The reason why I bring this up is that the Rube Goldberg that we’re making needs to have steampunk ascetics. Because of this we need to ask a question about the steampunk genre.

My question is: What are a few of the steampunk subgenres and how do they compare to each other.

After I went on a research spree, I was able to find four subgenres.

Dieselpunk

Dieselpunk is set in the early days of development of the car, the motorcycle, and the airplane. This means there is quite the timeline overlap with the Victorian and Edwardian era, but the technology is of a more sophisticated level. Less steam engines and more gas engines. More of a link with speed and the streamlined beauty of the Art Deco with less of a fussy Victorian aesthetic.

Valvepunk
It is all about valves, the technology of radio sets, and the early television. It is also referred to as Teslapunk. This is placed at a slightly later timeframe than Dieselpunk, but with lots of overlap. Valvepunk’s aesthetic is all about Bakelite, which was invented in 1907 and is a early plastic and was used to make a lot of things. It stopped being popular around World War Two. It was then replaced with more modern plastics at home and most industrial locations.

Cogpunk

Cogpunk is about clockwork and gears. Some say this is the heart of Steampunk. However, Cogpunk includes the handmade cars and watches that were made before the Industrial era, the French Industrial clocks of the Victorian era, Twentieth Century clockwork, and tin toys. It is all about uniqueness and one-offs.

Gaslight Fantasy

Gaslight Fantasy is where Steampunk has magic, or mythological creatures. It can also incorporate time travel, anti-gravity, or aliens. It’s anything that isn’t strictly a technological field invented by human beings. Most of the books in the Steampunk Literary genre have a Gaslight Fantasy aspect.

 

I was having a hard time deciding how I should compare each subgenre. I thought about using a Spectrum but I remembered that I’m   comparing multiple aspects of the subgenres not just one. I thought about using a Venn diagram. I then realized that if I use the Venn diagram all of the subgenres would be in the center. And that’s because the parts that I’m comparing exist in all of the subgenres.

After going on the internet to get some ideas, I found a diagram that would be perfect for the job. It’s called an Attribute diagram.

First, you put each attribute on an axis. You then plot your score for each attribute (the farther from the centre the higher the score). After you connect the dots, it creates a shape.

Here are my diagrams for each subgenre. The attributes I used to compare them are; Futuristic, Nonfictional, Utopian, Modern, Technological, Fictional, Dystopian, and Victorian.

 

From the diagrams, I surmised that Cogpunk exhibits a variety of all the traits, more so than the others. Also, I noticed that most of Dieselpunk’s attributes are furthest out on the chart- most extreme attributes. Valve punk has some of the least extreme attributes.

Ultimately, the subgeneres are very similar to each other.