The Thematic Differences Between Cyberpunk and Steampunk Literature

What If?: The thematic differences

between Cyberpunk and Steampunk Literature

Jeff Lemon

What if…? What if we are not alone in the universe? What if Hitler won the Second World War? What if machines can feel? Writers have been asking this question of ‘what if' for over a century. It is one of the most powerful and important literary questions of our time. If writers such as Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, and Clark didn't ask themselves this question, civilization, as we know it, would not be where it is today. This question alone gives writers the creative freedom and free rein to conjure up new technologies and play with fascinating possibilities of an all too present future. Ray Bradbury describes this as being the "sociological studies of the future, [where the] things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together." Furthermore, the question of ‘what if?' gives us the ability to scrutinize and critique our social structures, cultural environments, and technological progression by magnifying the importance of the analysis in the guise of a futuristic text.

Any piece of literature that attempts to seek answers to this question, falls under the rubric of speculative fiction. Robert A. Heinlein first coined the term speculative fiction (SF), in his 1947 essay " On Writing of Speculative Fiction " which was released in L. A. Eshbach's Of Worlds Beyond in 1948. Originally used as a synonym for science fiction, it is now used as an umbrella term to classify a host of different literary genres that look to ask the question ‘what if?': science fiction, alternate history, supernatural, and horror. Heinlein explains in Grumbles from Grave:

Speculative fiction (I prefer that term to science fiction) is also concerned with sociology, psychology, esoteric aspects of biology, impact of terrestrial culture on the other cultures we may encounter when we conquer space, etc., without end. (49) From robots and spaceships to scientists in white lab coats and societal critiques of our technological hubris, speculative fiction covers it all . Heinlein explains in On Writing of Speculative Fiction,: "there are at least two principal ways to write speculative fiction—write about people, or write about gadgets." (11)

There are many dualities through out the genus of speculative fiction that bridge one genre to another. Take the duality between cyberpunk (a subgenre of science fiction) and steampunk (a subgenre of alternative history). Although these subgenres belong to distinctive literary corpuses and are fundamentally different, they ask questions that are analogous with the other. Seeing that each subgenre is located at opposite