MySpace repost: "SciFi/Horror of Rudyard Kiping"

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Oct 24, 2009
currently reading Horror and Fantasy of Kipling

Well, to give the full title of the collection, The Horror and Fantasy Tales of Rudyard Kipling, including, "The Phantom Rickshaw", "With The Night Mail", "At the End of the Passage", "The Strange Ride of Morrowbia Jukes", and "Mark of the Beast".

Yes, this is the same Kipling who wrote the Jungle Book, which is quite different from the Disney animated film.


And yes, Kipling is well-renowned as a rascist and an imperialist ( I haven't made an informed opinion myself, and poor Kipling can't defend himself. Attacking the character of the deceased seems cowardly to me). I agree with other critics that that alone should not be held against his writing. His stories should be weighed according to their own merit.


Anyway, I was most interested in a single story, "With the Night Mail", subtitled "A Story of 2000 AD". I was rather suprised to learn that Rudyard Kipling wrote some sci-fi.


I have read it, although I have yet to read the other "tales" and it was an interesting read. Speculative as expected, rather than science-based, it nonetheless earns the title science fiction. Instead of a 'space opera' though it was a 'stratosphere opera'.

I will follow with further analyses of the more straight-forward psychological and suspense stories at my next blogging. I've never really read horror at all and I'm distinctly repulsed by horror movies, so we'll have to see.

Until next time...