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Rudyard
Kipling
THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING edited by John Brunner Citadel Press. 1994. Paperback. 178 pages. ISBN-10: 0806515082 Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches Shipping Weight: 8 ounces IMAGE:
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reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 01/18/2012 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. review: It is no secret to scholars that 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature winner Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was a master and innovator within the genre of the short story. But who ever thinks of Kipling as a pioneer science-fiction (SciFi) writer? And yet he was. Distinguished British SciFi novelist John Brunner assures us of that fact. And in homage to his master he has collected and edited nine Kipling short stories and a poem from KIM and issued them in 1994's THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING. Not only does Brunner individually frame each story first published between 1893 and 1932 with incisive introductory notes and needed glossary but also, in a general introduction "About Rudyard Kipling" locates the writer convincingly against his times, biography and physical ailments. And what a collection we have: a true sea serpent
story which no one will believe unless presented as fiction;
a thinking, talking steamship whose thousands of rivets, plates and other parts only form themselves into a unified soul during a first Atlantic voyage amid high winds and higher waves; a brand new thinking, communicating train engine that proves its mettle on its first night in service; in the early days of Marconi an effort to communicate wirelessly taps into time and produces a manuscript poem being labored over many decades earlier by young John Keats (1795 - 1821). Then come two intertwined tales: 1909's "With the Night
Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D."
and 1912 (written), 1917 (published) "As Easy As A.B.C." Both foresee a world united by ligher than air flying ships, carrying mail, passengers and other cargo. The world of 2000 and later has not eliminated tuberculosis but has virtually stamped out both anarchism and democracy in the name of law and order. 1917's "In The Same Boat" assumes that mental horrors can be traced back to a mother's trauma imprinted on her child in the womb: in this case on two affluent, very attractive young adults whose doctors cause them to share an overnight train ride to the west of London. Editor Brunner "can never help wondering whether this was
where L. Ron Hubbard stole the idea for the pre-natal traumas that in
DIANETICS he termed 'engrams.'"
This short SciFi anthology races to its conclusion with 1926's "The Eye of Allah," 1932's "Unprofessional" and a poem " The Fairies' Siege -- Enlarged from KIM" (1901). What a great romp! Some of the stories are long enough to feel like mini-novellas. But all challenge mind and imagination. Kipling was one of the first poets of machines and the machine age. He showed machines empathizing with their human masters, much as dogs do; but in the case of machines, people do not notice. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/438992033.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 01/19/2012 name of review: 1907 Nobel Prize Winner Rudyard Kipling: Pioneering Master of Science Fiction rating: * * * * * I am keen that you elect to read the nine short stories and one poem collected in 1994 by British SciFi novelist John Brunner under the title THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING. What must I do to induce you to open the pages of that book? Will you just take my word for it? Or must I first convince you that Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) permeates modern science fiction and is held in high regard by writers like Poul Anderson, L Sprague de Camp, Joe Haldeman, and Gene Wolfe? I feared as much. You prefer Poul Anderson to Qigongbear! So here goes. For starters dip into two 1989 books by David Drake and Sandra Miesel (editors) - -- HEADS TO THE STORM:: A TRIBUTE TO RUDYARD KIPLING; and -- A SEPARATE STAR: A SCIENCE FICTION TRIBUTE TO RUDYARD KIPLING. For more on what your favorite SciFi authors have to say about Rudyard Kipling see Fred Lerner's June 2004 masterly internet article at http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_scifi.htm Lerner concludes: "As any science fiction writer will
cheerfully admit, Rudyard Kipling is indeed 'a master of our art'”.
John Brunner's 1994 THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING begins helpfully with two editorial essays, "Kipling's Major Publications" and "About Rudyard Kipling." Rather than add end notes or at times badly needed glossaries, Brunner one by one precedes each of Kipling's ten SciFipieces with one to three pages giving original publication dates (ranging from 1893 - 1932), the gist of the yarn, what makes it genuine science fiction and its impact on later SciFi writers. Thus in the lead in to 1917's "In The Same Boat" Editor Brunner admits that he "can never help wondering whether this was
where L. Ron Hubbard stole the idea for the pre-natal traumas that in
DIANETICS he termed 'engrams.'"
What else is in THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING? -- A sea serpent whose death was witnessed by competent journalists but which no reader will believe unless presented as fiction; -- a thinking, talking steamship whose thousands of rivets, plates and other parts only form themselves into a unified living soul during a first Atlantic voyage stressed by high winds and higher waves; -- a brand new thinking, communicating train engine that proves its mettle on its first night in service; -- an early effort to communicate wirelessly taps over not many miles and by chance (?) taps into time and produces a manuscript poem being labored in another century by young John Keats. -- Next: two intertwined tales: 1909's "With the Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D." and 1912's (written), 1917's (published) "As Easy As A.B.C." Both foresee a 20th Century world united by ligher than air flying ships, carrying mail, passengers and other cargo. The world of 2060 and later has not eliminated tuberculosis but has virtually stamped out both anarchism and democracy in the name of law and order. The editor argues that this tale proves Kipling a libertarian! --1917's "In The Same Boat" is about psychological disorders of a young man and a young woman that are traced back to experiences they had in their wombs when their mothers experienced trauma. The Kipling SciFi anthology concludes with -- 1926's "The Eye of Allah," which asks how might history have changed if the microscope had been introduced into England of the 1250s; --1932's "Unprofessional": in which Kipling's scientists explore the universal energy that sweeps like "tides" from outside into all living beings, including microbes and diseases, and the rhythms and auras with which living beings express their reactions; and --a poem " The Fairies' Siege" (1901). Some excerpts deserve pondering: 'I'll
not fight with the Herald of God
(I know what his Master can do!) Open the gate, he must enter in state, 'Tis the Dreamer whose dreams come true! * * * I'll not fight with the Powers of Air, Sentry, pass him through! Drawbridge let fall, 'tis the Lord of us all, The Dreamer whose dreams come true!' In "Unprofessional" the hero had repeatedly argued to his scientific colleagues and fellow researchers that without imagination there is no original science. In "The Fairies' Siege" Kipling portrays a wizened old campaigner surrendering his master's castle (science? research?) to "the Herald of God," "the Dreamer whose dreams come true!" (imagination?). Is this vision not something that writers and lovers of Science Fiction can identify with? -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/Rudyard_Kipling_The _Science_Fiction_Stories_of_Rudyard_Kipling-1784404.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 01/20/2012 title of review: Winds and Waves Convert Thousands of Rivets and Moving Parts into the Soul of a Ship rating: * * * * * review: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a pioneering creator of SciFi. He wrote of some pretty "far out" parts of our world: Queen VIctoria's Raj in KIM, "the Phantom Rickshaw," of Masonic-remembering Kafiristan and talking beasts in THE JUNGLE BOOKS. Kipling wrote about worlds, things, places and peoples that he knew. But he mixed in imagination. When he imagined work, laboratories and medicine and, in 1909 and 1917, the worlds of 2000 and 2067, he pioneered science fiction. Nine of Kipling's SciFi stories and one poem were collected in 1994 by British SciFi novelist John Brunner as THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING. I will detail only the second tale, "The Ship That Found Herself" (1898). The MS Dimbula, a brand new, 240 foot long, state of the art, 1200 ton cargo steamer recently laid down in Glasgow is about to make its first run from Liverpool to New York. It begins as a mere collection of nuts and bolts and all the Dimbula's steel and wooden frames. Only unexpected challenges of a first voyage can turn a bucket of parts into a ship. Ship's officers do not know that those rivets, plates and beams combine the consciousness of newborn babes with the linguistic skills of eight-year olds. As their hull and propellers are battered by winds and waves on the North Atlantic, each part begins knowing only its individual job and fearing that other parts are letting them down. Wise old Steam is the only veteran. Steam has been in other ships, on land and in the air. Steam calms the parts, makes them empathize with one another and pull together. In the harbor of New York "a big new voice [spoke] slowly and
thickly, as though the owner had just waked up: ... The Steam knew what had happened at
once; for when a ship finds herself all the talking of the separate
pieces ceases and melts into one voice, which is the soul of the ship. 'Who
are you?; he said, with a laugh. 'I am the
Dimbula, of course. I've never been anything else except
that...'"
Remaining Kipling SciFi tales are of a talking locomotive
named ".007";
an early wireless
experiment that taps into time and finds poet John Keats (1795 - 1821)
scribbling his greatest masterpiece;
of a 20th Century world united by giant, speedy balloons hurtling from continent to continent. The 2060s are informally ruled by "A.B.C.," the "Aerial Board of Control" and woe betide anyone in Chicago or anywhere else on earth who forms mobs or agitates for democracy. The final three tales place us within mind/body complexities. A man and a woman
suffer nightmares from sharing in the wombs similar traumas inflicted
on their mothers.
In England of the 1250s a Benedictine abbot judges it prudent to bury knowledge of tiny living creatures that a Muslim microscope has detected in ditch water. Four scientists discover rhythms imposed from outside on laboratory rats and humans and hope that future medicine will profit. Kipling's concluding poem "The Fairies' Siege" was recently quoted on her release from house arrest by Burmese reformer and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. A Sci Fi interpretation of the poem is that there is no science without imagination. Science imagination IS science fiction: as probed in the book's
first story: four journalists witness the death of a sea serpent. They
dare publish this true story only as fiction!
-OOO- recommended reading: David Drake and Sandra Miesel (editors) - -- HEADS TO THE STORM: A TRIBUTE TO RUDYARD KIPLING; (1989) and -- A SEPARATE STAR: A SCIENCE FICTION TRIBUTE TO RUDYARD KIPLING. (1989) http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-science-fiction -stories-of-rudyard-kipling-rudyard-kipling/1000020878 ?ean=9780806515083&itm=13&usri=john+brunner =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 01/21/2012 title of review: A 1932 Kipling SciFi story foresees the body's "biological clock" rating: * * * * * review: I first read Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Fairies' Siege - Enlarged from KIM (1901)" as the final piece of ten selections in British SciFi novelist John Brunner (editor)'s 1994 collection, THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING. The three stanzas of "The Fairies' Siege" were included as a final salute to Kipling, a giant pioneer of the SciFi genre. What do fairies have to do with science fiction? To Kipling, according to editor John Brunner, fairies represent the imagination absolutely required to do good science. Without good science there no cutting edge science fiction. Much more recently Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi, smuggled out from Burma/Myanmar the text of her two Reith Lectures on "Securing Freedom." The final words of her first Reith Lecture are: "I would like to end this lecture with my favourite lines from Kipling with many thanks to Tim Garton-Ash who tracked them down for me. "I'd not give room for an Emperor
- I'd hold my road for a King. To the Triple Crown I'd not bow down - but this is a different thing! I'll not fight with the Powers of Air - sentry, pass him through! Drawbridge let fall - He's the lord of us all - the Dreamer whose dream came true!"" Probably citing from memory (the author had limited access to books), Aung San Suu Kyi slightly but insignificantly misremembered the first three lines of Kipling's "The Fairies' Siege." The change of tense in the last line -- from "dreams come true" to "dream came true" -- is, I suggest, deliberate. It refers to recent blossoming of limited freedom in Burma. A fine sense of the contents as a whole of THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING were given in Michael Wischmeyer's July 25, 2004 review at amazon.com's website. See http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fiction-Stories-Rudyard-Kipling/product -reviews/0806515082/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 There is no need for me to duplicate Mr Wishchmeyer's excellent review. Having already said a few words about the concluding poem, "The Fairies' Siege," let me conclude with some details of the collection's story which notably illustrates that poem's thesis about imagination being essential to science: 1932's "Unprofessional." In "Unprofessional" four British friends who had shared adventures in the trenches of World War I use the huge fortune that one of them inherited to do for the microscope what Tycho Brahe had done for the telescope and astronomy: they painstakingly, precisely over long months measured the progress of responses of injections of cancer cells into mice. When one of the four -- a surgeon -- performed operations on two women with cancer (or something much like it), the four, under the prodding of the friend who had inherited the fortune, systematically sought for evidence of "tides" (circadian rhythms we call them today) first in the laboratory rats then in Case 128, one of the cancer-cured women. Her disease recurred, she needed a follow-up operation, done this time, however, in deliberate, precise alignment with her birth date and at what the friends judged the best time for her "tides" to help her survive a relapse. An "unprofessional" junior colleague, a sailor from the Great War, made all the observations and kept the records. From time to time the friends studied films of their work to date. During one film of treated rats thought cured but now relapsing into a frenzy of unhealth and death, they noticed that a female rat held her head and otherwise imitated the behavior of human Case 128. Using that information they were able to predict the course of a coming relapse by #128 and help her surmount a final successful struggle against what she felt as the clear call to her by Death. A similar tale of future medical implications of discovered, predictable rise and fall of circadian and other internal human "tides" in response to illness is presented in Kipling's 1917 "In the Same Boat," a tale of exposure in the womb of two young adults to trauma experienced by their mothers. Toward the end of KIM, in a long passage on Oriental Massage, Kipling also makes plausible a belief in forces, waves and fields outside the body that influence human health. What conclusions do the four friends in "Unprofessional" draw for science from what they have done? What does it prove? --"Not a dam'thing,
except that it may give us some data and inferences which may serve as
some sort of basis for some detail of someone else's work in the
future."
-- "... it makes one --- not so much, think -- "Research is gummed up with thinking -- as imagine a bit" -- "You've got it. Imagination is what we want. This rigid 'thinking' game is hanging up research." -- The operation on # 128 saved her not just because it was great surgery but also because it was done deliberately, at the proper time -- proper as to the ebb and flow of the outside and inside tides of her body. If a surgeon gets a patient's rhythms wrong, the operation may be a success, but the patient dies. Bottom line: Rudyard Kipling was a master of fantasy and imagination across the board. Why not therefore in Science Fiction as well? -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fiction-Stories -Rudyard-Kipling/dp/0806515082/ref=sr_1_1?s= books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321873729&sr=1-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 01/22/2012 Review Title: "...'tis the Lord of us all,/ The Dreamer whose dreams come true!" Product Rating: * * * * * Pros: Kipling's Science Fiction: understated, calm, either believable -- or you wish it were believable! Cons: All tales are set on earth. No UFOs, bug-eyed monsters or inter-galactic wars. The Bottom Line: Here be nine "short stories" and one poem. Ships and trains talk. Poet John Keats composes long after he died. People are traumatized in the womb -- and more. aohcapablanca's Full Review: British SciFi novelist John Brunner's 1994 collection THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING contains nine longish short stories and one poem published between the years 1893 and 1932 -- four years before Kipling's death. Each story and the poem had one unforgettable impact on me as a reader: they made me think! Journalists steaming through the South Seas are caught up in a mammoth undersea volcanic eruption. They witness two giant sea serpents cast up from the ocean's floor: the death agony of the male, the loving concern of his mate. At first they cannot wait to file this first verifiable sighting of true sea monsters. But, wait. No newspaper will accept what they write because no reader will believe that this really happened. Solution: the cleverest of the journalists shall write it as fiction. And readers will buy it. The story is called "A Matter of Fact." In the second SciFi story of the collection we meet a brand new steam cargo ship all of whose thousands of parts can sense and communicate but haven't a clue what is happening to them on their first voyage across the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York. With the help of then only non-rookie among them, the Steam, they are taught to trust one another and to work as a team. Once in New York after a terrible storm, individual voices or rivets, plates and propellers are heard no more. The ship now has a soul and its is the only voice. The story: "The Ship that Found Herself." ".007" is a talking American locomotive that proves itself during a crisis on its first day of duty. "Wireless" (1904) discovers John Keats during an experiment of the early days of Marconi in the process of writing page by page, scratch out by scratch out, his 1820 masterpiece "The Eve of Saint Agnes." As editor Brunner asks: "Communication across space, with no tangible physical link between sender and receiver ... Then why not across time, too? Each of the remaining six prose stories is alike in this: they show men or machines giving themselves to their work -- whatever they are good at -- and discovering wonders therein. When I first read SciFi in the later 1940s, I began with B.E.M.s ("bug-eyed monsters") and Flash Gordon. By the time I graduated high school in 1952 I was agog for Ray Bradbury and C.S. Lewis's THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH. There is nothing downright weird or totally unbelievable in THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING. This is not fantasy, where the principle of causality is safely ignored. This is fiction rooted in science or at least in day-to-day reality where Leibnitz's principle of sufficient reason is always in high honor. These stories make us think and ask questions: -- Why must a true
story of sea creatures be told as fiction?
-- What if waves and winds and Steam could pound the initially barely related pieces of a 1200 ton cargo vessel into an ensouled unity? Would we necessarily notice? -- If locomotives could think, empathize and communicate to other locomotives, why wouldn't they admire their engineers and designers? Two inter-twined tales, "With The Night Mail" and "As Easy as A.B.C" explore the worlds of 2000 and 2067. Disease has not been wiped out (notably tuberculosis) but the world is unified by giant lighter-than-air dirigibles transporting mail, cargo, passengers and the tubercular (to healthy far north spas). Democracy is barely a memory and where it shows its head in mobs or in unruly demands, the A.B. C. ("Aerial Board of Control") will swoop down to set things right, as it does in Chicago. The final three prose stories show: -- two doctors
hypothesizing that two of their charges were made to dream horrible
dreams by traumas experienced by their mothers carrying them in the
womb. Talks with the two moms confirms the hypothesis;
-- early scientist Roger Bacon and others in a 13th Century English Benedictine monastery wrestle with what God wants them to do with a Muslim microscope that reveals tiny living creatures in a sample of muddy water; -- and English scientists from different specialities developing evidence of circadian rhythms in laboratory rats and in two human cancer patients. They learn to schedule cancer operations at the best time in a patient's life cycle, and with her being strongly pulled in opposite directions by "tides" from inside and outside them: one to life, the other to death. Finally, there is "The Fairies' Siege." We learned from the first 2011 Reith Lecture in her series, 'Securing Freedom' that Burmese pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi sees the last eight lines of "The Fairies' Siege" as "my favourite lines from Kipling." See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012402s The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner perceives, I think, in Kipling's verses the power of the pen, of reason, of imagination, of reasonableness being far mightier than political power arrayed against her by the tyrants of Burma/Myanmar. To editor John Brunner, by contrast, the point of the poem is to underline, rephrase a dominant message of the prose SciFi stories: science is nothing without imagination. And science fiction is nothing if unrooted in both science and truth. I conclude with Aung San Suu Kyi's favorite lines: "I'd not give way for an Emperor,
I'd hold my road for a King -- To the Triple Crown I would not bow down -- But this is a different thing. I'll not fight with the Powers of Air, Sentry, pass him through! Drawbridge let fall, 'tis the Lord of us all, The Dreamer whose dreams come true!" -OOO- p.s. Thank you, dear untiring Pestyside Patsy for making THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING accessible to reviewers and readers of epinions.com Recommended: Yes http://www.epinions.com/reviews/Rudyard_Kipling_ The_Science_Fiction_Stories_of_Rudyard_Kipling_epi http://www.epinions.com/review/Rudyard_Kipling_The_ Science_Fiction_Stories_of_Rudyard_Kipling_epi/content _577284443780 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (6) openlibrary.org 01/17/2012 THE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING Published 1994 by A Citadel Twilight Book Published by Carol Publishing Group in Madison Avenue, New York. The Physical Object Format
ID NumbersPaperback Pagination viii, 178 Number of pages 178 Dimensions 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches Weight 08 ounces Open Library OL25168818M
ISBN 10 0806515082 http://openlibrary.org/books/OL25168818M/THE _SCIENCE_FICTION_STORIES_OF_RUDYARD_KIPLING IMAGE OF COVER: http://c2.bibtopia.com/h/033/992/438992033.0.m.jpg http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/kipling_scifi.html |