As Easy as A.B.C.

Kipling, Rudyard. "As Easy as A.B.C." A Diversity of Creatures. 1917. Coll. The Science Fiction Stories of Rudyard Kipling.

Political fiction set in the same world as "With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D.", but a bit later: 2065 CE. In this future, the Aerial Board of Control pretty well runs things (cf. H. G. Wells's "Wings Over the World" in THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME), and there is world-wide communication. The happy ending of the story shows the full restoration of bureaucratic rule.

Note slogan "Transportation Is Civilization."

Put into context and briefly discussed by JJ Pierce in Imagination and Evolution: A Truer History of Science Fiction, pp. 352-53.

RDE, initial, 5Sept95; 20Mar26