Did Rudyard Kipling invent steam punk? Arguably, yes.
The other day, an online post took me back to my high school days, when I stayed up through one Saturday night to finish an anthology of Kipling stories. That must have been an earlier collection than the one edited by John Brunner in 1992, https://www.fantasticfiction.com/k/rudyard-kipling/kiplings-science-fiction.htm.
In those early 20th century days, science fiction was too young to even bear a name yet. The genre was wide open, very little conceived, let alone explored. It’s been said that Kipling was used to explaining the Indian ways of his childhood to English audiences. That skill would certainly come in useful for explaining imaginary worlds to readers shackled to reality.
Among Kipling’s fantastic tales are unlocked past lives, and a ship with a soul. Standing from the rest, undeniably what we would today call science fiction, are two stories; With the Night Mail, and As Easy As ABC. Both are set in the same future, (mostly) peaceful and with skies full of airships. Night Mail is a pure adventure tale. ABC comes with a heavy dollop of 1907 social commentary on top. This future certainly isn’t a utopia, but not a dystopia either. Somewhere in the middle, like most of history.
ABC harbors some unwittingly prescient predictions, though. The characters bemoan a world with a declining population, apathy, and old statues which the law requires be shrouded from view. Did Kipling have a crystal ball in his closet?
Night Mail and ABC are full of what would later become steam punk tropes. As are the works of Welles. There is a saying about success having a thousand fathers.
Most (if not all) of Kipling’s work is now in the public domain, and can be found at sites like the Gutenberg Project: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/132
I am surely not a Kipling scholar. I am in debt to others who have explored this subject farther. Links to some of those sources are listed below:
- Rudyard Kipling Invented SF!: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=234
- A Master of our Art, Kipling as a science fiction writer: https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/readers-guide/rg_scifi.htm