Read This, Not That: “With the Night Mail” vs. “The Clipper of the Clouds”

Although Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail: A Story of 3000 A.D. would be a great resource for anyone researching the Steampunk genre, I wouldn’t recommend reading it for any other purpose.

Why?

Because there isn’t really much of a story. There are a few vague characters, the narrator is nameless and devoid of personality, the plot is nearly nonexistent, and the point is completely lost.

This book is entirely forgettable. I should know: I actually read this twice because I’d forgotten I’d read it the first time, and the only reason I realized I’d read it before was because I had highlighted a Oh So Very Steampunk Passage of the text in my e-reader copy.

The bare bones of the story is that the Nameless Narrator is a news correspondent who is shadowing the daily (that is, nightly) workings of an airship. Yes, according to Kipling, dirigible-type aircraft are the mode of transportation of the future. Global travel is so easy that the intertwining of nations has necessitated a universal language so the airships can communicate with one another. The airships run on electricity and some sort of semiprecious gem power. Airplanes, called “’planes” exist as well, but are considered outmoded and unfashionable.

Kipling ends the book with a long “newspaper” of various want-ads and stories that simulate a “newspaper of the future.” This doesn’t seem to contribute anything to the flimsy plot, except to “world-build” somewhat. It was almost as if Kipling were taking notes on a larger story he was planning, but then gave it up and published whatever he had as a short story instead.

This book is a crying shame, because I generally like Kipling’s writing, and even if I didn’t, there’s so much raw potential for the story. I would have loved to read more about the international relationships and how Kipling speculated they would be changed by a global transportation network. Could his imaginary airships have battles? How did these gems help the ships function? Were these “airlines” privatized, or controlled by governments, or almost a separate global power themselves?

Jules Verne’s The Clipper of the Clouds (originally titled Robur the Conqueror) is pretty much Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea IN THE SKY. If Leagues were broken down into a basic formula, Clouds would tick off pretty much every check mark.

-          Begins with mysterious sightings around the world

-          Scientists trying to figure it out

-          Mysterious genius of unknown nationality is behind it

-          Genius kidnaps scientists and a token comic relief character and takes them on his travels

-          Although he’s supposed to be the “bad” guy the genius shows himself capable of compassion

-          Scientists try to escape

-          Genius is eventually defeated and goes down with his ship, apparently killed in a “blaze of glory”

-          BUT SPOILERS: Genius then shows up again in another book.

In this case, the role of Captain Nemo is played by Robur “the Conqueror,” a rogue aeronaut who is laughed out of the scientific community for thinking that aeroplanes run on machinery will master the skies rather than balloon-buoyant ships like dirigibles.

SPOILERS: He shows up again in Master of the World, just as Nemo shows up in The Mysterious Island. This time Robur keeps his feet on the ground, terrorizing people by speeding around in a race car, but otherwise the plot is similar to the first book.

Even more than Captain Nemo, I felt like Robur’s role as the villain of the story was forced. After all, his scientific theories were right (in-story, as well as later in reality), his antagonism toward the men he kidnapped was warranted by their insulting and condescending behavior, and he doesn’t really do anything bad to people except confuse them by popping out of the clouds in random places around the globe. In fact, before they’re kidnapped, the two scientists are kind of jerks in general, and they don’t improve over the course of the story as they scheme, argue, and continually insult Robur even when he’s in control of their fates.

The comic relief character is also unsympathetic, being a terrible caricature of a cowardly, foolish slave—even though, like the “cowardly fool” servant Job in She, he probably has more common sense than any of the characters in the book, despite Verne’s best attempts to make the reader laugh at him.

In conclusion: These two stories are exactly the sort of fiction that contributed to the newborn Sci Fi genre. Are they good science fiction? Not really. But if you have to read one of them, read The Clipper of the Clouds.

Or you could skip both and just read Longinus’ On the Sublime, which bears little to no similarity to either of these books, but is vastly superior and more edifying. I’ll talk about that book more next week.