Steampunk Insect

1988 saw the publication of the first version of the science fiction roleplaying game Space: 1889, set in an alternate history in which certain discredited Victorian scientific theories were instead provable and have led to the existence of new technologies. Contributing authors included Frank Chadwick, Loren Wiseman, and Marcus Rowland.
Steampunk as popular fiction
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1990 novel The Difference Engine is often credited with bringing widespread awareness of steampunk to a wider readership. This novel applies the principles of Gibson and Sterling's cyberpunk writings to an alternate Victorian era where Charles Babbage's proposed steam-powered mechanical computer, which he called a difference engine (a later, more general-purpose version was known as an analytical engine), was actually built, and led to the dawn of the information age more than a century "ahead of schedule".