A beginner’s guide to brass, boilers, and bold imagination Steampunk is a retro-futurist aesthetic and storytelling genre that imagines advanced technology powered by steam and clockwork, usually in a Victorian- or Wild West–era world. Think airships instead of airplanes, goggles instead of smart glasses, and elegance with grit. It mixes history, science fiction, maker culture, and fashion into one stylish, hands-on universe. Why “steam,” and why now? Steampunk asks a delicio