What is Steampunk? It is a retro-style Speculative Fiction set in periods where steam power is king. Very often this will be in an Alternate Universe where the internal combustion engine never displaced the steam engine, and as a result, all manner of cool steam-driven technologies have emerged, ranging from Airships to submarines; the plausible counterpart to magitek, with a Hollywood Science Hand Wave or The Spark of Genius. Largely, steampunk runs on Rule of Cool, with some supposedly.