Countries having different genre settings but set in one world. Is that even possible

I think it's doable to a point. One nation that's a hive of scum and villainy, natural habitat for a crime drama. Another that is a wild land of warring kingdoms, good for heroic fantasy. Another that's a tense covenant of squabbling royal houses, political drama. That sort of thing.

On the other hand, a steampunk country located in the same world and time period as a cyberpunk country? I think that would raise too many obvious questions in terms of why the gulf in technology is so vast and, even if they're equal but distinct, why these nations haven't adopted enough of each other's tech to make it more of a schizo tech setting across the board. Or if the cyberpunk is as more advanced as it seems, why the megacorp (whose entire reason for being is profit and expansion) hasn't just taken over the steampunk kingdom yet.

 

I think the steampunk vs. cyberpunk could be easily explainable-- size difference, natural barriers, distance, internal politics, available resources, etc. etc. can all explain them both existing.

So yeah, I say sure. Just have at least some explanation as to the why of things, and don't give the reader genre whiplash.

 

I actually did a story with steampunk, art deco/dieselpunk and raygun gothic all in one city. If you take a look around our world, even in a relatively small region, it's pretty amazing how anachronistic things can seem when it comes to architecture, attitudes or how institutions operate.

You could maybe mix the two: some regions of the country a newer, more technologically advance cyberpunk developments while other parts are more Victorian-looking. I mean, there are big, cosmopolitan European cities with whole neighborhoods that are several centuries old.
Then the government can be an absolute monarchy with some serious corporatism/corruption going on. Just think about the role of the church or guilds in feudalism and then switch them out for corporations.

The big inconsistency would be technology but it's reasonable to say that newer technology is just inaccessible to some people. I grew-up near Amish people and not too far from the Appalachia region so the idea of some communities being decades behind in technology isn't strange to me.

 

It would be neat if this kind of world was created by a reality warping author with a genre-savvy sense of humor. Maybe I'll do something like that.

 

I'm thinking for sure it's possible. Maybe one part of the world is closed off against the rest of the world and thus isn't as technologically advanced. Maybe the cyberpunk technology belongs to the elite and the downtrodden lower class knows nothing of it.

 

I think you have an overarching genre in the paranormal aspect that you mentioned before. Taking into consideration what the others have said about making the differences between the cities work within the world's logic, what ties it all together is the paranormal entities and stories that you tell.

In that case, regardless of what city the story is taking place in, whatever your major themes are will keep the readers grounded in the story. Coupled with a good management of the different settings, I think your idea could work really well and be an awesome read.

 

Its been done multiple times. The example that sticks in mind with me is a novel (title escapes me at the moment) by Alyster Reynolds. In that, a long ago 'event' made a sort of 'target pattern' for the city and the world. In the 'bull's-eye' pretty much everything worked, right up to star trek level stuff. The ring around that, well, the tech roughly on a par with ours. The next ring was all steam - electricity didn't work right. Past that, simple hand tech.

In the real world, we have high tech countries like the US - and tribal societies where tech beyond the simplest is almost unknown.

I have a lesser division on my primary world. 'Equitant' is a major province of the Solarian Empire, noted for its clever artisans, who among other things, created the network of semaphore towers that binds the empire together, invented bicycles for military use (now spreading to civilians), the printing press (under draconian state/church control) and a whole host of things like telescopes, crude cameras, and complex clockwork mechanisms. Take away steam power, and it'd be roughly on a par with the mid 19th century. Other provinces, though, rely on 'manpower' (slaves) and have long seen Equitant's marvels as a threat to the traditional order. They impose severe controls on what Equitant can ship them, and keep trying to sabotage Equitant's economy. Outside the Empire, there is everything from isolated city-states mucking about with the remnants of alien technology to nomadic savages.

Or, put another way, high tech civilization need not be global.