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.
Author Biography
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901) and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "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 classics of children's literature and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift." Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined.
