With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.d.(together with Extracts from the Comtemporary Magazine in Which It Appeared)
With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.d.(together with Extracts from the Comtemporary Magazine in Which It Appeared)
Kipling wrote this in 1904, imagining what the year 2000 would look like. His vision: a world where massive aerial vessels crisscross the Atlantic overnight, carrying passengers and mail from London to Quebec in elegant comfort. The story follows a journey aboard postal packet No. 162, with Captain Purnall navigating turbulence, other flying vessels, and a dramatic distress call from a derelict ship. But the real treat lies in Kipling's fictional magazine extracts woven through the narrative: advertisements, social commentary, and practical details about prices and etiquette in this aerial civilization. This is science fiction as pure optimism, a charming portrait of technological progress that feels wonderfully naive yet strangely prescient about our connected world. For anyone curious about how the Edwardian imagination pictured our present.
