Paddle Cruiser - Steam Punk

Steampunk Paddle Cruiser

 

Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates 

technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-

powered machinery. Although its literary origins are sometimes associated with 

the cyberpunk genre, steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of 

the 19th century's British Victorian era or American "Wild West", in a post-

apocalyptic future during which steam power has maintained mainstream usage, or 

in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power. Steampunk may, therefore, 

be described as neo-Victorian. Steampunk perhaps most recognisably features 

anachronistic technologies or retro-futuristic inventions as people in the 19th 

century might have envisioned them, and is likewise rooted in the era's 

perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art.Such technology may 

include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules 

Verne, or the modern authors Philip Pullman, Scott Westerfeld, Stephen Hunt and 

China Miéville. Other examples of steampunk contain alternative history-style 

presentations of such technology as lighter-than-air airships, analogue 

computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical 

Engine.

Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy, 

horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative 

fiction, making it often a hybrid genre. The first known appearance of the term 

steampunk was in 1987, though it now retroactively refers to many works of 

fiction created even as far back as the 1950s or 1960s.

Steampunk also refers to any of the artistic styles, clothing fashions, or 

subcultures, that have developed from the aesthetics of steampunk fiction, 

Victorian-era fiction, art nouveau design, and films from the mid-20th 

century.Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual 

artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of 

visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.