Steampunk isn’t just books and movies—in the U.S. especially; it’s a whole way of life. Steampunk clothes and jewellery, steampunk ornaments and sculptures for the house, steampunk art and steampunk music … just browse the net and see what a huge cultural phenomenon it is!
 It’s appropriate to mention the net because this is a movement that’s grown from people with similar tastes finding one another on the net. It probably started as an offshoot of goth culture, but it’s way bigger than that now.
You can purchase steampunk jewellery and sculptures, but this is a DIY movement too. Just find some cogs, wires, fiddly bits and superglue, and you can create your own items of steampunk art. You can make a steampunk version of anything, though there’s a particular buzz in steampunking the most modern items of technology: an electric guitar with a 19th century look, a computer keyboard with cogs and wires. Or how about a brass and copper version of a USB memory stick?
Clothing fashions tend to be vaguely Victorian, but not in the way of accurate historical reproduction. Kit Stolen, as seen  here, calls himself an ‘anachronaut’ —that is, he’s in search of historical anachronisms. What he wears isn’t true to historical fact, only historical possibility.
Since steampunk fashions generally involve wearing odd bits of metal, maybe there’s a surprise connection to the Punk movement of the 70s after all. Who’s game to trace the evolution of the rivet as a feature of personal style? From Levi jeans to 70s Punk piercings to rivethead subculture and on to steampunk—postgraduate students in search of a thesis topic, where are you?
Steampunk music is a dodgy one. There are steampunk bands like Abney Park and Vernian Process working to create a distinctive sound … I’m not sure how much it differs from the industrial music sound. In fact, my expertise has just run out, so I’ll stop here before I offend anyone!
Here are a few of the best-known steampunk websites—they’ll soon lead you on to a million more.
http://www.steampunkmagazine.com/
http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/brassgoggles
http://etheremporium.pbworks.com/Wiki
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