Steampunk ist wie Dieselpunk & Co. eine Spielart des Cyberpunk. Und Cyberpunk ist ein von Bruce Bethke geschaffenes Kunstwort für den Titel der 1980 geschriebenen, gleichnamigen Kurzgeschichte. Bethke kombinierte jeweils ein Wort aus dem Bereich Technologie mit einem Wort aus dem Bereich Störenfriede, bis er eben über "Cyberpunk" stolperte:
Bethke scheint den Begriff "punk/punkish" hier im amerikanischen Sinne des Wortes zu verwenden -- also in der Bedeutung von "Rabauke" ohne Bezug auf die britische oder europäische "Punk" Szene gleichen Namens.Bethke in Ethymology of Cyberpunk hat geschrieben: [It was] 1980: I was living in River Falls, Wisconsin (population 7,000), selling Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1s, taking courses at the local college, and hanging out on the very distant periphery of the Minneapolis music scene. I thought I was doing okay; after all, I'd gotten the sales job by a dazzling display of computer prowess (I'd shown the Radio Shack store manager how to load and run the BASIC demo program for his display model), and I was making as much money each month as I'd made in the previous year as a musician… Then one day a trio of kids, the oldest maybe 14, came into the store and started puttering with the demo computer. I turned my back on them for about two minutes. When I looked again the kids were gone, the demo program was trashed, and in its place they'd left me with something that had the Model 1 jumping through hoops. I took a few minutes to admire their ingenuity, then broke out of the program and looked over the code. Damned if I could figure out what it was doing. Okay, no problem. The Model 1 had this big orange RESET button on the front panel. I hit the button, reloaded my only copy of the demo program (can you tell where this is leading?), keyed in RUN -- And that's when I discovered their other little surprise.
A pinch of Educational Psych -- Teenagers live in an ethically neutral state. They haven't got the hang of empathy yet, nor have they really grasped the linkage between their causative actions and the resulting effects… [which means they are ‘punkish’]
A snort of Political Theory -- Just as command of a communication medium is power, technological skill is enfranchisement, and in 1980 we were some 20 to 30 years away from an explosive proliferation in technology that would radically change the distribution of power in society… [fight the system]
A double-shot of A Clockwork Orange -- Colloquial English evolves in response to technology. What will it be like in twenty or thirty years? -- and I ended up with this core idea…
The kids who trashed my computer; their kids were going to be Holy Terrors, combining the ethical vacuity of teenagers with a technical fluency we adults could only guess at. Further, the parents and other adult authority figures of the early 21st Century were going to be terribly ill-equipped to deal with the first generation of teenagers who grew up truly "speaking computer… [fully punkish]
THEREFORE, if you thought that punks on motorcycles were a problem, just wait until you meet the -- the -- You know, there isn't a good word to describe them?
Der Begriff wurde dann schnell als Genre-Bezeichnung auf andere dystopische Romane übertragen, die in einer abgeratzten High-Tech Welt spielten -- ganz vorne "Newromancer" und Nachfolgeromane von William Gibbson (insbesondere im englischen Original lesenswert).
Die Cyberpunk und Steampunk Szenen sind letztendlich die Cosplay-Szenen zu diesen Romanen und deren Verfilmungen -- und haben mit den uns bekannten "Punks" nix, aber auch rein gar nix zu tun.
Aber das nur am Rande.