Beauty, Rebellion, and Reinvention Steampunk has been called a fashion trend, a literary subgenre, a design style, and a form of escapism. In truth, it is all of those things and more. Its staying power comes from the fact that it does not simply ask people to admire the past. It invites them to rebuild it. That is part of what makes steampunk so enduring. It is not nostalgia in the plain sense. It is imagination with gears on it. It takes the materials, manners, machinery, a