Short Fiction Kipling, Rudyard: Actions and Reactions. V1. 27 Oct 2012

[crutledge]

Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( /ˈrʌdjəd ˈkɪplɪŋ/ RUD-yəd KIP-ling; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (a collection of stories which includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), Just So Stories (1902) (1894), Kim (1901) (a tale of adventure), many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) and his poems, including "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The White Man's Burden" (1899) and "If—" (1910). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift"

Imagine an alternate reality where the man who gave the world THE JUNGLE BOOK and "Gunga Din" and "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" was a science fiction writer -- generations before Hugo Gernsbeck and AMAZING; before the pulp SF that dominated the thirties; before intellectually prescient ASTOUNDING in the forties and sophisticated literary SF magazines like GALAXY and THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION fifties. Think of it: a world where Rudyard Kipling was a science fiction writer, long before SF as we understand it was invented. Well (you could tell this is where I was going, couldn't you?) actually, he was. And the book you¿re holding in your hands -- ACTIONS AND REACTIONS -- is a wonderful example of it. It feels a lot like the sort of sophisticated SF -- literary without being precious -- we all remember from the Golden Age of GALAXY and THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. Imagine that. We live in an alternate universe.

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