With the Night Mail and As Easy as A.B.C.: Two Yarns About the Aerial Board of Control

by Rudyard Kipling Narrated by Gildart Jackson

Overview

Rudyard Kipling's thrilling science fiction novella follows the exploits of an intercontinental mail dirigible battling foul weather. Meanwhile, a planet-wide Aerial Board of Control enforces a rigid system of command and control in the skies and in world affairs, too. In Kipling's 1912 follow-up story, 'As Easy As A.B.C.,' set 65 years after With the Night Mail, the Aerial Board has complete control over the social and economic affairs of every nation. When a mob of disgruntled 'Serviles' in the District of Northern Illinois demands the return of democracy, the A.B.C. sends a team of troubleshooters and a fleet of 200 zeppelins to 'take such steps as might be necessary for the resumption of traffic and all that that implies.'

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal - Audio

03/01/2014
Though he's best known for his Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Conan Doyle also wrote a series of short stories about eccentric scientist Professor Challenger. In this work, originally published in 1913, the professor invites his friends to bring oxygen tanks with them to his London home. There, they gather at the window to watch the end of the world as a layer of poison gas kills all living beings in its path. Most of the action in this slow-moving story, read by Gildart Jackson, is told through the philosophical and theoretical conversations among Challenger and his terrified friends as they contemplate the meaning of what they've witnessed.Kipling's two stories concern the Aerial Board of Control, or A.B.C., an air traffic control organization that develops into an unofficial, despotic world government. In the Night Mail was first published by McClure's Magazine in 1905. An unnamed reporter in the year 2000 is a passenger on an airship bound for Quebec from London. Much of the story is comprised of long, heavily detailed descriptions of the airship's design and the imaginary scientific principles that make it work. As Easy as A.B.C., published first by London Magazine in 1912, rejoins the despotic reign of the A.B.C. in the year 2065 as it dispatches zeppelins to subdue an insurrection. This story reads like an operations manual for the airships, and the human characters have very little personality. VERDICT Only the most ardent fans of early sf are likely to be interested in these recordings, all of which are marginal purchases for larger libraries.—Claire Abraham, Keller P.L., TX

SEPTEMBER 2014 - AudioFile

Narrating two short stories, Gildart Jackson deftly delivers the author’s vision of a possible future. In 1905, Kipling imagined a society in the distant twenty-first century largely under the command of an air-traffic superpower called the Aerial Board of Control. A cadre of citizens who desperately crave privacy and democracy cuts off communication with the ABC to protest. Jackson speaks smoothly with a voice that’s crisp and clear. While the primarily English male voices in the first story aren’t particularly distinguishable, each suggests a unique personality. Jackson demonstrates his real talent in the sequel, in which he switches effortlessly between a range of accents and pitches—English to American to Russian to Japanese to Italian, male to female—instantaneously from one to the next, soundly reproducing Kipling’s dark world. A.K.M. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175575805
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	11/05/2013
Series:	Aerial Board of Control
Edition description:	Unabridged

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