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<blockquote data-quote="Byrons_Ghost" data-source="post: 1031894" data-attributes="member: 7396">I'm pretty sure the term &quot;Steampunk&quot; derived from the term &quot;Cyberpunk&quot;. The similarity here, of course, is the term &quot;punk&quot; which refers the the gritty, street-level life that gives cyberpunk it's noir-type feel. Steampunk books like &quot;Morlock Night&quot; by KW Jeter or &quot;The Difference Engine&quot; by William Gibson &amp; Bruce Sterling kept the &quot;punk&quot; feel by playing up the class divides of Victorian society, and the poor conditions of the lower classes and minorities. I don't think that either novel had any kind of fantasy elements. Not surprisingly, Jeter, Gibson, and Sterling are all well-known cyberpunk authors.Between the publication of these two books (1979 for Jeter, 1990 for Gibson &amp; Sterling) there was a spate of fantasy authors doing a sort of &quot;victorian scientific romance&quot; genre that was lumped in with steampunk, for instance &quot;The Anubis Gates&quot; by Tim Powers and &quot;Homonculus&quot; by James Blaylock. These also used alternate histories, but got rid of the more &quot;punk&quot; aspects in favor of more Jules Verne and HG Wells-flavor stories. Anyhow, books like these would be the basis for Arcanum or Falkenstein-style games.Incidentally, I'm reading through Falkenstein right now and Pondsmith never uses the term &quot;steampunk&quot; for it. But there's enough similarities in the origins of the genres (and of course, Pondsmith also wrote R Talsorin's Cyberpunk) that all of these sort of get thrown together now. Check out this FAQ here:<a href="http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9094/STEAMFAQ.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9094/STEAMFAQ.html</a> As if things weren't complicated enough, the writer of this FAQ (and a lot of other people) just append the term &quot;-punk&quot; to anything that deals with alternate historical or modern settings that have weird technology or magic. So we have Gothic-punk, Deiselpunk, etc etc. Blech...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Byrons_Ghost, post: 1031894, member: 7396"] I'm pretty sure the term "Steampunk" derived from the term "Cyberpunk". The similarity here, of course, is the term "punk" which refers the the gritty, street-level life that gives cyberpunk it's noir-type feel. Steampunk books like "Morlock Night" by KW Jeter or "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling kept the "punk" feel by playing up the class divides of Victorian society, and the poor conditions of the lower classes and minorities. I don't think that either novel had any kind of fantasy elements. Not surprisingly, Jeter, Gibson, and Sterling are all well-known cyberpunk authors. Between the publication of these two books (1979 for Jeter, 1990 for Gibson & Sterling) there was a spate of fantasy authors doing a sort of "victorian scientific romance" genre that was lumped in with steampunk, for instance "The Anubis Gates" by Tim Powers and "Homonculus" by James Blaylock. These also used alternate histories, but got rid of the more "punk" aspects in favor of more Jules Verne and HG Wells-flavor stories. Anyhow, books like these would be the basis for Arcanum or Falkenstein-style games. Incidentally, I'm reading through Falkenstein right now and Pondsmith never uses the term "steampunk" for it. But there's enough similarities in the origins of the genres (and of course, Pondsmith also wrote R Talsorin's Cyberpunk) that all of these sort of get thrown together now. Check out this FAQ here: [URL=http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9094/STEAMFAQ.html]http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9094/STEAMFAQ.html[/URL] As if things weren't complicated enough, the writer of this FAQ (and a lot of other people) just append the term "-punk" to anything that deals with alternate historical or modern settings that have weird technology or magic. So we have Gothic-punk, Deiselpunk, etc etc. Blech... [/QUOTE]

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