Wastelands: Age of Iron

I'm presenting a paper at Wastelands tomorrow morning:

A Brief History of Steampunk: What Wound It Up and Why It Still Ticks

Steampunk can be purely science fictional or a mixture of science fiction and fantasy, suffused with anything from a heavy dash to a light sprinkling of neo-Victorianism. So why not neo-classicism? Or druidism? Or Roman chariotpunk? What is it about the Victorians that secures their place in steampunk? To explore this question, I will look at works of proto-science fiction, beginning from the early 1800s, following an evolutionary branch to the works of Jeter, Powers, Blaylock, Gibson, Sterling and Mieville.