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Steampunk is not about science, IMO, but a 'what if'. It answers questions about an era that never was. So, asking thyself 'What if back in the victorian eras technology advanced rather rapidly and magic existed?' is just as valid.

Steampunk technology is hand-wavium, unexplainable fun. Just as magic is hocus-pocus fun. To me, both science and magic are indistinguishable. True, that golem may be destroyed by a spell, but when a human creates an A-bomb, science goes up in the Power scale, and it's up to the spellcasters to create a stronger spell. The possibilites of adding magic to a steampunk setting are very varied.

Besides, a Man vs Nature theme would fit well with Steampunk, as many are usually engineers, inventors, etc, and are kinda defying nature to prove themselves.

What is Aether in Steampunk? It's an unexplainable substance, if it IS a substance. It powers tools, weapons, etc. It transfers information (Aetherweb). It does things that are hard to explain with science. Does Aether not fit into the magic category?

While magic is not needed fer Steampunk to work, it adds flair, expands on what is already a solid setting.

Besides, any sufficiently advanced technology is as powerful and versatile as magic. So science=magic in some cases.

Using magick as a way to get away with crazy stuff is lazy. Way I've always put it, if you can do something with your own two hands, don't bother with casting.

If you want coffee and there's a machine in the room, just use the machine.

If you can defeat a weak enemy easily, don't bust out the summoning runes.

Magick is good in the right ways, but don't use it for EVERYTHING.

I mean, heck, WoW is steampunk and it has arcane engines and steam engines.

Oh, wow!! I got a nice debate going!!
Well then..

El Capitan, how much of the fantasy
genre do you read? More importantly,
which fantasy book scarred you for
life? I must admit that when asking
the author a question about a fantasy
book, and getting "Magic" as the only
answer to your question, it's a bit
unnerving. But magic, when done
properly in a work of fantasy, has set
rules of what can and cannot be done
with it. So, it's a system unto itself
that can be used alongside technology.
I, personally, have only read one
steampunk work that did not use magic
in some form.

It seems to me that watching this thread,
everyone seems to have fallen into the
old "Magic VS. Technology" argument. I
think that they can work swimmingly
together. Lemme give you an example!!
I am a steampunk WIZARD!! My magic
can give me the power to strike my enemies
down with LIGHTNING!! But that particular
spell is more than a wee bit consuming for
me. If I wanted to do it, I'd be laid out for
awhile dealing with the consequences of
my magic. Sooo... I build an army of soulless
mechanical automatons to do my bidding
(I guess I'm a bad guy steampunk wizard).
Each automaton is fueled by a power core
that harnesses my electricity powers in small
doses so as not to leave me passed out like
some drunken hippie. With my army of
soulless mechanical automatons, my enemies
will cower in fear!! See? Yes. Oh, that was
fun.

What?!? Steampunk is not about Science?!? What are you raving about! Steampunk is speculative fiction; you're right about it being a what if, but its "What if steam technology had progressed exponentially?". The question "What if magic were real?" was, last time I checked, answered by the fantasy genre. True enough, as I said earlier, Steampunk Fantasy as a gestalt is perfectly acceptable and answers both questions, but is Steampunk Fantasy. The fantasy tag at the end there is important.

Steampunk is not a question of "What if?". That is what all fiction is. Saying that Steampunk is any "What if?" question concerning the 'era that never was', as you put it, can unfortunately be exposed as folly thusly: "What if Jack the Ripper never disappeared?". It fits your criteria, but I, and I think many others, would not call it Steampunk.

Yes, Steampunk technology is oft absurd, and truly it is often unexplainable to us, or by our standards, but the important distinction is that in the Steampunk world itself, it is explained for all those who understand it. It is just a kosher to their scientists as real and existing technology is to ours.

To answer your question, Aether is some unknown substance, and not at all magical to a Steampunk fellow. Or, indeed, to a real-life Victorian, as it was a true theoretical substance, so not magical in the slightest. The reason it is commonly seen in Steampunk works being used to allow all sorts of crazy things like the Aethernet and allowing things to fly is because very little about it was known in the Victorian era, and that it is fictitious, and so authors have a free licence to create what it does do not that in their setting it is an established reality. But, nevertheless, no matter what things it does that seem freaky to us, to the Steampunk characters it is, whilst marvellous, entirely explained within the boundaries of science, and subject to close scrutiny and investigation. To them, and that is the important part, it is not what they would call magic, but science.

To summarise the above, what is important in such things as Aether is perspective. To us, the effects seem magical, but in the Steampunk world that is just they way it is, and not magical at all. Wonderous and little understood, but not magic. Dark energy in reality is perhaps an analogy; to us it is only theoretical, little understood, but real and subject to scientific scrutiny. But to an outsider, it may seem that the idea of a unobservable energy that is exerting a repulsive force must be magic.

And that really is for me a very important feature of the Steampunk genre (as opposed to the Steampunk Fantasy genre), is that no matter how fantastical something may be, it all can be rationally explained through Science. Magic, on the other hand, it entirely inexplicable by science by its very definition, and so for me necessitates the addition of 'Fantasy' to the genre. And it is not just Steampunk that I require this for. Anything that includes magic is part of the fantasy genre, as well as any other genres it may qualify for inclusion in.

But, just to be clear, this is not to say the Magic and Steampunk cannot be combined. Just that that is the genre of Steampunk Fantasy, not raw or pure Steampunk. Steampunk is the rampant scientific developement in the Victorian era, or a similar one, and Fantasy is the magic. If the term Steampunk were to include magic as standard, what would you propose we call the genre of Steampunk without magic, hmmm???

That, sir, is terrible. For shame.

not necserilly magic, but i am using alchemy (FMA style) in my webcomic, when i get around to scanning the pages on my desk...

so, a handful of characters can cast fireballs and such, based on the four magical elements (fire, earth, water, wind) and the sub elements (Metal, Ice, Lightning, Gravity)

however, as i say, although it is kinda magic, i use the term Alchemy in the same way FMA does, as a more acceptable term for magic.

I agree wit Elliot Vidal and I think we are all saying the same things.

Magic can be steampunk, despite the previous negativity toward such notions.

That being said Steampunk does not have to include magic.

What steampunk must include is an imaginative re-evaluation of Technology/Science. Some of us, myself included, might debate that that is a magic of its own kind, but as this is a moot (debatable) point, any further discussion on this fact will need to be extremely careful not to fall into pettiness and semantics.