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SHE: Do you like Kipling? HE: I don't know, I've never Kippled If
you've never read Rudyard Kipling's science fiction, then you've
never Kippled.
Having achieved international fame with The Jungle Book, Captains
Courageous, Kim, and his Just So Stories, in 1905 Kipling
serialized a thrilling science fiction novella, With the Night
Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D, in which the reader learns -- while
following the exploits of an intercontinental mail dirigible
battling foul weather -- about a planet-wide Aerial Board of
Control, which enforces a rigid system of command and control not
only in the skies (which are increasingly crowded with every manner
of zeppelin) but in world affairs too.
Kipling got so excited by his own utopian vision that when the
story first appeared in McClure's Magazine, it was accompanied by
phony advertisements for dirigible and aeronautical products that
he'd written, plus other ersatz magazine clippings. In one of these
latter, we read that the Aerial Board of Control had effectively
outlawed war in 1967 -- by reserving to every nation the right of
waging war so long as it does not interfere with traffic and all
that that implies.
This turns out to imply a great deal In Kipling's 1912 followup
story, As Easy As A.B.C., which is set 65 years after With the
Night Mail, we learn just how complete the Aerial Board's control
is over the social and economic affairs of every nation. When a mob
of disgruntled Serviles in the District of Northern Illinois
demands the return of democracy, the A.B.C. sends a team of
troubleshooters (from England, Russia, Japan, and Italy) and a
fleet of 200 zeppelins to take such steps as might be necessary for
the resumption of traffic and all that that implies. Democracy, it
seems, is an impediment to the smooth flow of international
commerce -- so it was abolished during the 20th century, along with
newspapers.
What happens when the A.B.C. troubleshooters confront the
democrats? Trouble
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