I've been thinking about Steampunk lately. I was always vaguely uneasy with the term, since I rarely if ever saw any punk elements in Steampunk. It seemed like a lazy adaptation of Cyberpunk, which in my mind does convey the punk within the genre. Maybe I missed it, but although I think it's probably a safe categorization to classify Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a Steampunk comic, I can't think of any real punk elements in it. So when I recently started reading Girl Genius, I finally discovered a term that fits the genre better: Gas-Lamp Fantasy. The Foglios came up with the term for Girl Genius because they didn't feel like Steampunk fit, and I couldn't agree more. In fact, Gas-Lamp Fantasy is a term that I believe fits LXG as well.

On the other side of the coin, though, we have Steampunk Magazine, which I've been known to peruse. Their mission is to put the punk back in Steampunk. In theory, then, anything in Steampunk Mag should fall easily into the Steampunk classification. I suspect the line between Steampunk and Gas-Lamp Fantasy will become blurrier as a result of the magazine's efforts; in attempting to put the punk back in Steampunk, surely some attempts will fail, regardless of how good the efforts are in and of themselves.