Crossing times and building worlds. On steampunk seriality in the 19th century futuristic novel

The works of Jules Verne, Albert Robida, H. G. Wells and the popular “Edisonades” are seen as the origins of a retro-futuristic imaginary that leads to the stabilization of a fictional world in the so-called steampunk aesthetic. But, although considered a genre based on iterative elements given as signs of a coherent universe (machines, urbanization, industrial progress, Victorian style), steampunk proves to be both heterogeneous —since it is made up of multiple interactions between real and fictional characters with crossover processes— and diversified in numerous variations. These variations are not confined to a single historical period, as there is also dieselpunk based on the inter-war period and atompunk focused on the pre-digital period from 1945-1965.
To what extent is steampunk a kind of rearrangement of intertextual and visual repetitions of the very first productions dealing with retrofuturism? Why is the 19th century a pivotal moment for these fictions? How do they use counterfactual dynamics to generate multiple universes based on uchronic divergences from the real historical context? By choosing the perspective of seriality, considered as a generic process that deals with speed, the mixing of generic codes and literary creativity, this paper intends to analyse this dual dynamic of coherence and fluctuation in steampunk fictions inherited from futuristic literature. The aim is to explain both the autonomy of this world which makes steampunk an easily recognizable aesthetic, and at the same time the plasticity of such a fictional world that spreads across many different media and cultural expressions including today’s films, video games, role-playing games and fan communities.