In the 80s a new science fiction literary genre emerged – cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is fiction which is high tech but low life, taking the classic dystopian themes of science fiction in a very grungy direction. This movement spawned a related social movement of those who enjoyed and engaged with the cultures so important in these works. But this article isn’t about cyberpunk, its about two different genres which came out of cyberpunk – biopunk and steampunk. These two genres are vastly different from each other – and yet there is something inescapably similar about them. Why do steam and genes go so well together?
