The Steampunk Boiler Room

Kotaro,

I will have to second Cerulean's thoughts. This is more of a time-travel, alternate history type of story.

One of the key differences between traditional alternate history and retrofuturism (of which steampunk is a part) is that alternate history stories tend to be focused solely on the changing of a key event or series of events, almost always by someone in the story, while retrofuturism is an assumption of events having already been changed--not by the characters--but by the nature of the story or the characters being part of some subtle change that the world around them is largely unaware of.

Alternate history, whether involving time travel or not, tends to fall strongly in the "what if?" vein of SF/F and usually begins to call into question whether or not changing events would have really changed history. Retrofuturism, conversely, has a sense of anachronism that is used to both create the world (generally Victorian or Edwardian), as well as parallel our contemporary sensibilities--i.e., it usually has much more social commentary or has that as its focus.

Hope that helps.

Cheers
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J Boone Dryden
Managing Editor, The RetroFuture Engine
Author, The Alchemist's Bane: A Steampunk RPG Adventure Novel (forthcoming)