Steampunk

A subgenre of cyberpunk science fiction with dystopian, noir themes usually in an anachronistic Victorian or quasi-Victorian alternate history setting. These stories hearken back to the early science fiction of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. This is not to say that all victorian writing is steampunk in any way. Compared to the computer, robotic, and nanotech focus of cyberpunk fiction, steampunk fiction focuses more intently on thermo mechanics, especially steam engine technology.

See also Alternate history.

Bibliography

Steampunk

[The Steampunk Trilogy]? by [Paul Di Filippo]?

Steampunk (comic book series) by [Joe Kelly]? and [Chris Bachalo]?

[The Difference Engine]? by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling -- the designs of Charles Babbage lead to the wide usage of mechanical computers in [Victorian England]?. (See difference engine)

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1898 by Alan Moore

The Grand Ellipse by [Paula Volsky]?

Pasquale's Angel By Paul McAuley

Jack Faust by [Michael Swanwick]?

Perdido Street Station by [China Mieville]?

Age of Unreason Trilogy by [Gregory Keyes]?

Castle Falkenstein : high adventure in the steam age by [Mike Pondsmith]?

A Nomad of the Time Streams by Michael Moorcock

Infernal Devices - [K.W. Jeter]?

The Sundowners Series by [James Swallow]?

Homunculus by James Blaylock

L'équilibre des paradoxes by [Michel Pagel]?

Lord Kelvin's Machine by James Blaylock

Quasi-Victorian Science Fiction

A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! by [Harry Harrison]? -- an alternate history novel written and set in the 1970's in a world where the American Revolution failed and the British Empire is still going strong. It has a nice mix of technologies advanced or behind ours, with high powered lasers used for drilling, while Babbage engines are used to do calculations for sub-orbital flights.

Queen Victoria's Bomb by [Ronald Clark]? -- in the mid 19th century; a physicist gets the idea of isotopic separation after seeing pebbles graded by size on a pebble beach, and makes an atomic bomb. He intends to use it to end the Crimean War, but it never gets used, and no difference is made to history.

His Dark Materials series by [Philip Pullman]? -- fantasy/alternate-universe science fiction with a quasi-Victorian setting

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson -- A cyberpunk adventure in a nanotechnological future, with much of the action in a neo-Victorian society

Influential Victorian Science Fiction

From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The Ablest Man in the World by [Edward Page Mitchell]?

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