I have read some of Gibson's work and cyberpunk was interesting, but it wasn't something I could get into. Here's the stuff of the future, and it's all...inaccessable. It's not something that I can point to and say, "wow, that's neat stuff", because that "neat stuff" is just a bunch of ideas in an author's head. When I first heard of steampunk, I heard of it as a form of fiction. Who would know that it would take off in popularity, and the retro-techno-fitting of just about everything with that...craftsmanship. Suddenly, a light goes off in my head - this is accessible. It's more than just accessible, it's doable, it's something that will challenge what skills I have, and it can be made to be beautiful, even if that "beautiful" is pseudo-Art-Deco mixed with Victorian Brass.
I think the real appeal of Steampunk lies in its pre-industrial-revolution charm; a kind of accelerated technology that is still accessable to the common person in the street. You can't just open a chip fab and start churning out your own microprocessors. You can get your hands on some brass and do some milling, and come up with something both beautiful and functional.
The downside is that I don't have the skills, or the time, or the money to get started. (sigh)
