Quote - > Quote - I accept steampunk is a recent twist somehow but I don't get it. The definition of steampunk I read would make the original Frankenstein steampunk as well as a lot of other stories we know well. Most stuff by HG Wells, Jules Verne etc...

No, they don't count as Steampunk.  Shelley was writing science fiction looking forward (the fact electricity could cause the muscles of dead animals to twitch had been made not long before, and she was extrapolating), Wells was looking forward while Verne was either looking forward or writing what we'd today call a technothriller (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea being the main example here).

Steampunk has to be looking backward at that era, using the inspiration of Wells and Verne but looking at it with a modern point of view.  To use an easy example, writers of the time would be unlikely to use the "Wrench Wench" character (Agatha Heterodyne from "Girl Genius", for instance) whereas someone with more modern sensibilities would have no problem with the character simply because the idea of women as mechanics, or mad scientists, isn't something that's outside our acceptance range.

To me one of the key defining aspects of Steampunk is that the technology has to be ubiquitous. One mad scientist with an armored dirigible is period science fiction (think Verne's "Warlord of the Air".) Fleets of armored dirigibles are steam punk. In a way it is one of the distinguishing factors of Cyberpunk vs. near-future hard SF. One cyborg (Martin Caidin's "Cyborg", which became the series "Six Million Dollar Man" is science fiction. Everyone cyberizing is Cyberpunk.

In addition, there really should be some acknowledgement that the technology will change things. Having everything exactly the same as historically but with giant walking steam engines rather than trains, sub-etheric techno-telepathy instead of telegraphs, and half the house of Lords being Martians (and with the dreadnaugh race between Great Britain and Germany being armored airships and earth tunnellers rather than battleships) is just incoherent. It's like those Piers Anthony novels where everything is just like the current day, but with magic, and a few strategic renames of countries.