so, i was looking around on instructables yesterday, and i found quite a few steampunk costume/decoration-related things. disconcertingly, a lot of these were tagged cyberpunk.

this leads me to believe that people think that the two are similar. untrue. cyberpunk concerns the near/dark future, whereas steampunk concerns an alternate victorian past. nor were the two related until william gibson and bruce sterling co-authored the difference engine.

while the two are the most prominent cyberpunk authors of the 1980s, that is still not a reason to relate the two. in fact, it’s more of a reason for realizing the seperation, as the goal of the book was to work outside their regular genre and engage in something novel and new.

this lack of seperation will only confuse both parties. i’m not a particular fan of the steampunk aesthetic, so when i’m looking for cyberpunk things, it’s frustrating for me that so many steampunk links come up, and i’m sure that there are steampunkers who would say the same in reverse.

let’s try to keep our genres straight, shall we?