Kipling! Serialized!
By:
March 20, 2012
HILOBROW’s serialization of Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 AD (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) begins tomorrow! New installments will appear each Friday for 24 weeks.
With the Night Mail follows the exploits of an intercontinental mail dirigible battling the perfect storm. Between London and Quebec we learn that a planet-wide Aerial Board of Control (A.B.C.) now enforces a technocratic system of command and control not only in the skies but in world affairs, too. A follow-up story, “As Easy As A.B.C.,” recounts what happens when agitators in Chicago demand a return of democracy: The A.B.C. sends zeppelins armed with sound weapons to subdue not the agitators, but a mob who would destroy them! With the Night Mail is set in 2000, and it first appeared in 1905; 2012 marks the centennial of the first publication of “As Easy As A.B.C.”
In June, HiLoBooks will publish a beautiful new edition of With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”), checked against the 1909 first published edition (Doubleday), with an Introduction by science fiction author Matthew De Abaitua, and an Afterword by science fiction author Bruce Sterling. SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED! CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY.
The text of With the Night Mail follows the version published in McClure’s Magazine in 1905 and reprinted in Actions and Reactions in 1909. The text of “As Easy as A.B.C.” follows the version published in 1912 in London magazine, and collected in A Diversity of Creatures in 1917. These texts are in the public domain.