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. These are included at the end of the book.
My First Book: the experiences of Walter Besant, James Payn, W. Clark Russell, Grant Allen, Hall Caine, George R. Sims, Rudyard Kipling, A. Conan Doyle, M. E. Braddon, F. W. Robinson, H. Rider Haggard, R. M. Ballantyne, I. Zangwill, Morley Roberts, David Christie Murray, Marie Corelli, Jerome K. Jerome, John Strange Winter, Bret Harte, "Q.", Robert Buchanan, Robert Louis Stevenson, with an introduction by Jerome K. Jerome and 185 illustrations.
Originally from The day's work (1898)
This edition from The works of Rudyard Kipling, vol. XIII, The day’s work, Part 1 (1911)
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), Brito, naskiĝis en Bombajo en la tiama Brita Hindujo kaj edukiĝis tie kaj en Britujo. Li laboris kelkajn jarojn kiel ĵurnalisto en Hindujo kaj poste loĝis en Usono kaj Britujo. Li famiĝis per noveloj kaj per patriotismaj, imperiismaj poemoj. Nun li estas ankoraŭ fama pro siaj infanlibroj: "Ĝangalo-libroj", "Kim", "Tiel do-rakontoj". Li ricevis la Nobelpremion por literaturo en 1907.