Steampunk 101

Steampunk Technology

Now, here's what separates steampunk from historical fiction and turns into science fiction/fantasy: the technology. It's a really big part of the steampunk universe because, like the Victorian era, it's a defining feature of the genre. This chapter will mostly be a list of basic technologies, along with quick explanations and ways you can get them into your book in the most seamless way possible. This section will be updated as I think of more pieces of tech, so be sure to keep checking this page :D

Airships:

These are a bit of a favorite of mine. Now, when I say airship, I mean things like zepplins, planes, blimps, balloons, or literally just air ships, like in "Treasure Planet". As you can imagine, these can be pretty important to your story. Maybe your story's about a pirate that raids the skies; maybe your steampunk world is in the middle of a massive war, and airships take to the skies in awesome battles of epicness. There's a lot you can do with this, and it's a very popular feature in steampunks. 

Automatons:

Basically, an automaton is like a robot. They were designed to perform a specific function, and these were actually around as early as 1600s Japan. The functions of these automatons can be as simple as a bird-looking thing singing a song to something incredibly complex, like walking, talking, or maybe even being a robot assassin. Below are a few video examples of things that real-life automatons can do. The first is a video about the Karakuri automatons, which are basically old-school wind-up toys and the first automatons. The second video is a demonstration of an automaton that can play the harpsichord.

These little beauties have a lot of potential in steampunk stories. Perhaps your automaton is like those tea-serving ones. Maybe they gain minds of their own and try to take over the world. Like everything else involving steampunk, the possibilities are endless.

Cyborgs

I use these a lot in my own writing. Basically, a cyborg is a human with robot parts. An example of this would be Ed in "Fullmetal Alchemist". These are pretty cool, and it really adds that steampunk flavor to your story; at least, that's what my readers have said. You can use this as a way to introduce some of your character's background (maybe your character got their hand caught in a machine and had to get it amputated), or even the history of your world (maybe there's some American Civil War-scale fighting, which is causing a whole lot of amputees). They're also just kind of cool. 

Steam Engines

How could we talk about steampunk technology and not mention steam engines? These are a pretty basic piece of technology: basically, it's an engine, but instead of using gas combustion like our engines, they use steam. As you can imagine, you can use these in a lot of different sorts of settings: you can have steam locomotives (especially if your story is a Weird Western), cars, motorcycles; basically, every sort of machine that you can think of will probably run on some sort of steam engine. Here's a diagram of how a steam locomotive works, since those actually exist in real life. 

That's it for this chapter. Next up: character archetypes.