Steampunk is a science‑fiction and speculative‑history sub-genre imagining an alternate past (usually the 19th century) in which advanced technology is powered by steam, clockwork, and Victorian‑era engineering. Often described as “elegant machinery and anarchic adventure,” Steampunk stories explore societies transformed by retro‑futuristic inventions, with characters, inventors, and rogues navigating worlds where brass, gears, and steam drive both progress and social conflict.
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My take as someone who only glances in here on occasion.
Does it have big gears? Does it have zeplins? Does it have big clocks or pipes and bells and whistles? If so, it's fine by me. Steampunk was always about the aesthetics and machinery for me, less specifically about "it runs on steam".
That's my expectation as well. I think most people are just here for the vibes/aesthetic and aren't going to "well, ackshually..." at me. I might add an [aetherpunk] tag for the items I post that are closer to aetherpunk than steampunk, but I don't think it's going to prevent me from posting those items.
Of course, people do love categorizing things and putting everything into its own little box, so we get these sub-sub-niches.
Specifically, building taxonomies seems like a Victorian-era thing.
Steampunk with magic and supernatural elements can exist, Castle Falkenstein is a good example of it. My two favorite examples of Aetherpunk are Eberron setting of DnD and Kaladesh/Aavishkar from MtG - places where magic is the fuel of scientific inventions.
I would argue that Arcane isn't steampunk, just as I would argue that World of Warcraft isn't - sure, both feature stuff that is steampunk looking, but those things are just a small part of the greater world.
Long time fan here, these things, while looking the same, are actually very different. While aesthetically they both rely on clockwork, mechanical drives, have a focus on early industrial revolution designs, and both can have magic, the true difference comes from implementation.
Steampunk focuses on the mundane. Supernatural elements can exist in steampunk, but either exist as rare occurrences or as the bleeding edge of science and not as an accepted magical concept. Frankenstein is a great example of this. While he does resurrect the dead, he does so through the use or strictly scientific means. There are no incantations, runes, forbidden tomes, just good old bad surgery and galvanism.
Aetherpunk is what steampunk would be if magic is an accepted facet of the world. It takes the fantastical idea of magic and applies it to the mundane. While steampunk has steam powered buggies that are somehow more practical than a horse, aetherpunk shoves a magical crystal into the engine and hand waves away the part where steam alone cannot produce that kind of energy. You see this in D&D's Eberon or the dwarves of elder scrolls. Both have mechanical constructs that look to be robots, but are explained by magical crystals or enchantment instead of by complex engineering. Aetherpunk has runes inscribed on pipes to magically reinforce them, it uses science to perfect ancient rituals.
Some additional media examples:
Hellboy is aetherpunk. Despite being set in a modern, mundane world it recognizes supernatural beings as being Supernatural instead of unexplained mundane things, opting to combat them by putting mahical junk in bullets.
Most of the lovecraft sci-fi horror is steampunk. The magical aspects are naturally occurring things that we don't understand by can be explained by science. Cold Air is just the advanced application of air conditioning and most of the eldritch beings are naturally occurring creatures of our or cosmically adjacent universes.
League of extraordinary gentlemen is steampunk. While all the characters are supernatural, they are rare entities and science is used to explain them.
I do think magic can exist inside a steampunk setting, as long as the mechanical aspect remains mechanical and mundane. Arcanum is steampunk, despite having plenty of magic.
I've always thought of it like: what is coming through the pipes? If it's just steam, then it's steampunk. If it's magicy energy goop in the pipes then it's aetherpunk.
That's basically what I'm saying about the mundanity of the situation. Steampunk can be loaded with magic, it's just not mundane. Take it like Indiana Jones, every movie has a clearly magical thing at its core, but even in temple of doom where the magic is daily practice of the culture presented, it's not mundane. It's an aberration even in it's own culture and needs to be stored away from society
I still really like Postmortal_pop's explanation of how common the magic is. If it's commonplace enough to be used as an energy source, it's aetherpunk. Otherwise, if magic is uncommon or otherwise "special" then it'd still be considered steampunk. I like how that leaves some room for random unexplained phenomena to not change the genre.
To me it's not the rarity so much as the interaction. If magic interacts too much with the technology (such as crystals powering engines or glowing energy goop flowing through the pipes instead of steam) then it's aetherpunk. If the magic and technology are mostly as separate, it's steampunk.
That's an amazing explanation, thank you!
It's what I do lol, not every day I get to break down two of my favorite topics.
Final Fantasy VI.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
The term I seen used for stuff like this is aetherpunk, which is similar to steampunk but with constrained magic as the predominant fuel source.
