As a form of speculative fiction, it explores alternative futures or pasts but can also address real-world social issues.

Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy, horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative fiction, making it often a hybrid genre. Other examples of steampunk contain alternative-history-style presentations of such technology as steam cannons, lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Such technologies may include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. Steampunk most recognizably features anachronistic technologies or retrofuturistic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them - distinguishing it from Neo-Victorianism - and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American 'Wild West', where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.

Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. 'Maison tournante aérienne' (aerial rotating house) by Albert Robida for his book Le Vingtième Siècle, a 19th-century conception of life in the 20th century

Fantasy valley city art