I'd say it gives a really good snapshor. Up until now I was thinking of actually inventing a seperate sub genre just to properly catagorize my world. Example: What do you call it when an historical figure from the French Revolution is reincarnated into a 21st Century Occupy Walstreet context? It isn't really scifi, but it's not really historical fiction either in the traditional sense. It's not Steampunk either, as technology is just present day. Interestingly, the genre I thought would fail me the least was Cyberpunk, there is so many "Cyberpunk must have hackers, and be set in the 80s" types that it doesn't inspire as much confidence as it once did.
