: This tag should be used for questions about the steampunk genre, such as questions about marketing in this genre or problems encountered when depicting characters or technology in your writing.

@Ann1701686

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This tag should be used for questions about the steampunk genre, such as questions about marketing in this genre or problems encountered when depicting characters or technology in your writing. Steampunk generally refers to a genre where the focus is on technology and its impact on humans, most often in a Vistorian setting. There are many other -punk genres that are often grouped together with Steampunk, such as Dieselpunk or Cyberpunk.

Appending "punk" at the end is often used to show that the main character or characters belong to a certain niche group and are rebelling against the current society - the defining aspect of which is in these cases the technology. Anything that is categorized as "-punk" can therefore be said to focus on the technological aspects of a society and illustrate the problems that arise from excessive usage of such technology, whether from a personal or a societal standpoint.

There are lots of different genres that belong to this "-punk" group and you can categorize all of them under "retro-futurism" or "sci-fi-punk".

Here is a list of genres taken from Punkpunk: A Compendium of Literary Punk Genres and shortened:

cyberpunk: started the trend; future dystopia; humanity and technology become one
steampunk: past (victorian era) dystopia; technology is usually steam-powered
dieselpunk: World War I or World War II; big machines and black smoke
biopunk: cyberpunk, but with a focus on biology, such as implants and DNA hacking
bugpunk: biopunk, but only with bugs...
transistorpunk: Cold War
nanopunk: cyberpunk, but only with nanotechnology
decopunk: dieselpunk, but with Art Deco style...
atompunk: shortly after World War II

While there is technically a distinction between the different -punk genres they can often be grouped together. This tag should be used for questions that fall into any of the described -punk settings.

You should mention which aspect of the setting are giving you trouble or why you think the genre is relevant to your question, such as when asking to find resources specifically for writing in this genre, or asking for example about writing queries for agents and publishers that are specifically interested in such works.

Furthermore the length of your work might be of relevance, such as whether you are working on a novel, novella or short-story.

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