“The future isn’t what it used to be.” The term steampunk describes the use of Victorian (steam-powered) technology in a futuristic setting. The aesthetic appears in contemporary imaginary fiction to suggest what might have been, extrapolating nineteenth-century ideas into far-flung alternative futures. But when the genre first appeared there was nothing nostalgic about the visions of where technology was taking humanity, as can be seen in the six classic steampunk titles in Steampunk Six Pack. Gulliver’s Travels Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms by Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s visit to the land of the Houyhnhnms is a nightmarish voyage into a futuristic world where Nature has perfected itself and talking horses rule. One of the earliest examples of speculative futurism, Swift’s imaginative canvas anticipates the more overt steampunk stories to come a century later. The story gave us the word yahoo, a derogatory term used by the equine aristocracy to . CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK FOR FREE