K. W. Jeter is widely credited with coining the term "steampunk" in 1987.

The story is actually pretty funny.

At the time, writers like K. W. Jeter, Tim Powers, and James Blaylock were writing Victorian-era adventures featuring strange inventions, airships, and alternate histories. People were comparing them to the cyberpunk movement led by writers such as William Gibson.

Jeter jokingly wrote a letter to Locus magazine suggesting that, since "cyberpunk" was the trendy label, their Victorian-flavored stories should be called: "...something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like steampunks, perhaps..."

The name was intended as a tongue-in-cheek joke.

The joke stuck.

Today, "steampunk" describes an entire aesthetic and subculture of brass goggles, steam-powered machinery, airships, Victorian fashion, clockwork gadgets, and alternate-history adventures. What began as a sarcastic label in a magazine letter became the official name of a global genre.

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