Same for the "Clockpunk" subgenre - It's Sci-Fi in the time or form of Leonardo Da'Vinci.
There's definetly a point, though - Have you read Sci-Fi set in the time of the Pyramids? In the time of the Roman Empire? Would you? What would change?
It's worth looking up "Rome Sweet Rome", a short story that got some acclaim a few months back when it was written on Reddit and then optioned by Warner Bros. It's modern military sci-fi, essentially, but the setting and the detail that's put into "What would happen if a modern platoon were set down in the time of the roman empire?" is pretty good.
John Barnes wrote a whole series of this kind of alt-history (e.g. "Caesar's Bicycle", "Washington's Dirigible", etc.). Which reminds me that there is, of course, a entire genre called "alt-history", starting presumably with Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", and notably including L. Sprague deCamp's "Lest Darkness Fall" (1941, and online in its entirety at scribd by arrangement with the author), and branching out a lot over the past decade or so.
I'd totally read Hellenistic steampunk. That's the culture that invented steam power (and fancy clockwork, see the Antikythera mechanism); it's pretty disappointing there's all this Victorian steampunk instead.
There's definetly a point, though - Have you read Sci-Fi set in the time of the Pyramids? In the time of the Roman Empire? Would you? What would change?
It's worth looking up "Rome Sweet Rome", a short story that got some acclaim a few months back when it was written on Reddit and then optioned by Warner Bros. It's modern military sci-fi, essentially, but the setting and the detail that's put into "What would happen if a modern platoon were set down in the time of the roman empire?" is pretty good.