Steampunk has been around a while, but it seems to rather suddenly have achieved a new level of popularity. Perhaps that’s due to the fact that it combines several other smartie genres, from sci-fi to alternative history to Victorian literature, and usually with a bit of the suspense or thriller novel thrown in for good measure. It doesn’t hurt that some terrific writers have tried their hand at the form (which really came into its own with the now-classic The Difference Engine, by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson — a novel postulating what the nineteenth century might have been like if Charles Babbage had actually manufactured the early computer he’d theorized).

But now it seems to be coming off the page and onto the street. Here in New York there were several steampunk-themed events over the Halloween weekend, such as this steampunk haunted house. This blog post says there’s something steampunk about Mickey Mouse in Disney’s new Epic Mickey. And oh yeah as for the artform that started it all, Publishers Weekly says a book forthcoming after the holidays from Dexter Palmer called The Dream of Perpetual Motion may be the next biggie in the genre. Their review says it “will surely win over readers who’d ordinarily pass on anything remotely sci-fi.“

One of the most interesting recent real-world steampunk events, though, is the steampunk exhibition at Oxford’s Museum of the History of Science. In a comment at Ready Steady Book, Mark Thwaite says the show — which is billing itself as “the world’s first exhibition of Steampunk art” — is “One of the most enjoyable and surprising exhibitions I’ve seen in a very long time.” There’s more at the show’s website, and in the video below, which shows the Steampunk iPod that’s part of the show.