1) Steampunk is a style (possible sub-genre) of alternate-history SF where 'modern' technology developed earlier, typically in Victorian times. It includes things like the Babbage engines getting built, Victorians developing heavier-than-air flight and radio. It is sometimes used for much earlierperiods as well, such as the Romans or Greeks. It is also used for fannish role-playing and costuming about that sub-genre, including making devices with modern ideas but Victorian technology, and making thing which look Victorian but contain modern technology.
2) I don't know when the term was first used, but the concept has been around at least since the 1960s (Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" and Ronald Clark's "Queen Victoria's Bomb", for instance).
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ninetydegrees
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2010-11-17 13:37 (UTC)2) I don't know when the term was first used, but the concept has been around at least since the 1960s (Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" and Ronald Clark's "Queen Victoria's Bomb", for instance).