By way of opening comments, I get a little irritated with steampunk which ignores the history of the era. Usually there is a nod to Queen Victoria and that’s it.
Gibson and Sterling’s The Difference Engine I thought was pretty good at giving the nod to an alt-1855, dealing with absences and changes well of history in very good detail. I guess that is the sort of thing I am looking for: just as much alt-history as plot driven…
Have you read The Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire? It’s a series by Rod Duncan about a version of England where a Luddite revolution stopped all scientific progress during the Industrial Revolution.
I haven’t had the chance to read it, yet, but Stephen Baxter’s “Anti-Ice” is on my short list, and certainly would seem to be right up your alley.
I liked the Leviathan Series by Scott Westerfeld. It’s an Alternate WWI where the Central Powers have the “traditional” gears and metal Steampunk trappings and the Allies are a Victorian version of genetic engineers.
While technically not steampunk, Tim Powers’s The Anubis Gates is close enough, and a fine book.
Mark Frost’s The List of Seven and The Six Messiahs are both great Steampunk fantasy.
James P. Blaylock’s “Langdon St. Ives” books are pretty good.
It’s alt-future, but steampunk-ish, and I’m really enjoying the Agatha H series.
And the Ketty Jay series was good too.
As a lark, check out Boilerplate and his history. He even has a song created just for him: “The Boilerplate Rag,” which I’ve been trying to sequence for a while now (my copy is tiny and blurry).
What about steampunk movies or tv shows?
Best recommendation by far that I can make is the comic Girl Genius
Also, if you like narrative-driven games, you might check out Fallen London Not precisely steampunk, but I think it might appeal to someone who likes steampunk.
Oh cool! I knew that those Agatha H books I mentioned were written by the Girl Genius people, but I didn’t realize that they are a novelization of it.
Alternate futures, reminds me of The Witches of Chiswick by Robert Rankin. Starts in the future, travels back via a steampunk time machine from a different timeline. There’s also a bit about a time travelling sprout called Barry who comes from an alien world run by vegetables, but the main part of the book is steampunk. I believe he won some sort of steampunk fiction award for one of the sequels, but I don’t really like the sequels.
Girl Genius (and Agatha H) isn’t technically future, but it’s far enough past the divergence from our timeline that the history is basically completely different. England is ruled by Albion, who’s either immortal or the next best thing to it, Paris is ruled by one “Simon Voltaire” (relationship to our world’s Voltaire unknown), and most of the rest of Europe is ruled by the Wulfenbach family, all three of whom are sparks (mad scientists). There are still royals around, but their influence is much diminished compared to that of the sparks, and the families aren’t what they are in our world (though those few royals who also happen to be sparks enjoy a fair bit of status).
Thanks team. I’ll go shopping.
Simon Voltaire was killed about six weeks ago. His daughter (Charlotte?) has taken over as Master of Paris.
Voltaire and his cronies took over Paris and established it as a “Wulfenbach-free” zone where art and science could flourish.
Agatha is currently on her way to London. I’ve never seen her leave the Continent before, so I’ll take your word about Albion. (There’s an entr-acte story running at the moment set in Mechanicsburg and featuring a Jagermonster-for-hire; I was really afraid it was going to indulge in all the stupid private-eye cliches, but today’s installment is a hilarious lampshade instead.)
Or Video games, if its not your thing, play the BIOSHOCK series of games (BioShock: Infinite will suck you right in) and it surely will be. It has a great steampunk theme to it and the plot plays better than many many movies, its truly unique. Pretty much a universe that takes place/stuck in the 1930’s with 1800’s mechanics are art deco design, its one of the strangest yet intriguing steampunk things to ever exist.
Would you kindly? You won’t regret it if you like steampunk.
Check out a synopsis of the games…
Also, check ebay or amazon for Bicycle ‘Steampunk’ playing cards, very very cool. 
Well, yes, I was giving the status-quo summation, not the current specific upheavals. And we’ve never seen Albion, but there have been numerous references to her, plus a fair bit of speculation that she’s not who she claims to be (perhaps a succession of different sparks, living and dying in turn as normal, all claiming to be the same immortal individual).
It occurred to me last night that the earliest example of steampunk is Robert Heinlein’s *“The Number of the Beast” *(1980). In that novel, the four interdimensional adventurers briefly end up on a Mars occupied by the British Empire and Russia, in an interplanetary extension of The Great Game. Ornithopters, very slow spaceships, and steam-driven automobiles managed by teams of people abound.
***Infernal Devices ***by KW Jeter. It’s a blast!