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Rudyard Kipling is one of the major literary figures influencing the flowering of science fiction in the 20th century. H. G. Wells was the great imaginative force behind Scientific Romance from 1895 to at least the 1920s, but Rudyard Kipling was the most popular English language writer of his day, and it is not Wellsian but Kiplingesque storytelling and attitudes that dominated the Golden Age of SF and its descendents. Even though he wrote very little actual sf -- "With the Night Mail" (1905) is his single most important story of this kind -- fantastic elements abound in his fiction. The recent (1992) publication of a volume of The Science Fiction of Rudyard Kipling laden with encomiums from such diverse sf writers as Jerry Pournelle, Gene Wolfe, and John Brunner only confirms his enduring appeal and influence. In his introduction John Brunner points out that Kipling uses the historic present tense, in his day an unusual usage in English, which became part of the arsenal of sf writers.

While Robert A. Heinlein certainly borrowed techniques liberally from the fiction of H. G. Wells, the affect of his classic stories is markedly from Kipling. Certain devices from this story -- in particular the imaginary future advertisements, news reports, and letters to the editor that accompanied its first publication -- turned up in some of Heinlein's future history stories. Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson, to name only two others among many, also acknowledge a debt to Kipling.

In fact the whole complex of attitudes about the manly virtues of military service in sf is more a legacy of Kipling's poetry and fiction than of any other body of work. It is possibly the coincidence of World War II with Campbell's Golden Age (when many of the most influential stories of Robert A. Heinlein were first published), followed by the dreary Cold War, that has kept the link between hard science fiction and Kiplingesque military sf strong.

"With the Night Mail" is Kipling's sociological speculation based upon the invention of a new machine and a new technology to support it. It is an interesting contrast to H. G. Wells' story of another machine in "The Land Ironclads." It is worth noting that the name of one of Hugo Gernsback's other magazines, published in the 1920s before he founded Amazing Stories, was Science and Invention (partly devoted to wonderful inventions and partly to fiction). This Kipling story idealizes ship captains and crews, military discipline, and civil service all at once: an hierarchal, paramilitary air postal service controls communications and rules the world of the future, for the benefit of all. The story was so popular, in the day of the competition between the airplane and the airship for the future of the air, that Kipling also wrote a sequel, "As Easy as A. B. C." in 1912; "With the Night Mail" was also reprinted and published alone in an illustrated hardcover volume in the 1920s.

The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer. Interactive Introduction to the Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1995, 1996 by Black Mark Productions, Ltd .

Mentions in The Ascent of Wonder

Notes on Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Mentions

• "On Hard Science Fiction" by David G. Hartwell
• Note for "Davy Jones' Ambassador" by Raymond Z. Gallun
• Note for "The Weather Man" by Theodore L. Thomas
• Note for "Transit of Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke
• Note for "To Bring in the Steel" by Donald M. Kingsbury
• Note for "The Land Ironclads" by H. G. Wells
• Note for "The Beautiful and the Sublime" by Bruce Sterling
• Note for "Kyrie" by Poul Anderson
• Appendix

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