‘With The Night Mail’ by Rudyard Kipling
I was a bit sceptical about the inclusion of this story but it is indeed a proper hard SF story, exactly the sort of thing you’d expect in an anthology of the evolution of the subgenre. So hooray for that. Unfortunately ‘With The Night Mail’ takes the familiar, old-fashioned form of a guided tour of the world of tomorrow and is entirely without plot. After the “story” there are a further 16 pages of extraneous guff that flesh out the world but are beyond even sarcastic quote marks.
Hardness: *****
Quality: **
Written by Martin
22 November 2010 at 22:10
Posted in sf, short stories
Tagged with rudyard kipling, the ascent of wonder
2 Responses
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Everything Is Nice 
[…] No, Not Rogov!’ by Cordwainer Smith ‘In A Petri Dish Upstairs’ by George Turner ‘With The Night Mail’ by Rudyard Kipling ‘The Longest Science Fiction Story In The World’ by Arthur C Clarke ‘The Pi […]
The Ascent Of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF, edited by David G Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer « Everything Is Nice
23 February 2011 at 14:53
Yes, it’s just a tour of the future. In his follow-on story, “As Easy As A.B.C.”, Kipling gets into the political implications of control of the air.
For a tour of the past to which Kipling is alluding, see the documentary “Night Mail”, by the London, Midland, and Scottish Railroad. “www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WO7JxYlhOM”
John Nagle
11 May 2011 at 19:05