A Diversity of Creatures

By Rudyard Kipling

Book Overview

Fourteen stories, each followed by a poem on the theme of the story. 'As Easy as A. B. C.' is a strange tale of the future, A.D. 2065, when the planet is under the benevolent rule of an A rial Board of Control. The disease of crowds and democracy has ceased, and a small outbreak of democratic agitation makes it necessary to deal with the American district of Illinois through a rial artillery of sound vibrations and withering rays of light. Stalky and Beetle reappear in the 'Honors of War' hazing a priggish cad who is converted from the error of his ways. 'Regulus' is a schoolboy comedy having to do with the teaching of Latin, the connection of classic learning and everyday boy life. There are three psychical stories. The phantom dog who haunts a man is the real dog "Harvey," owned by the woman he subconsciously loves. 'Swept and Garnished' is a grim war story, in which the ghosts of murdered children appear to a complacent German woman making it impossible for her to disbelieve comfortably. 'Mary Postgate' deals with the effect of resentment for the slaughter of the innocents in the European war on one woman in England. She has an unexpected opportunity to be judge and executioner. 'The Edge of the Evening' tells of an encounter with spies who descend from an aeroplane on the lawn of a country house just before dinner. There are stories of the British peasant in real possession of the land whether its nominal ownership is Roman or English. 'The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat' is a comic extravaganza, the revenge of a party of motorists upon the magistrate who fines them unjustly for speeding. One of the group is a producer of opera, one a member of parliament, one a journalist, and all are brilliantly equipped in different ways for the confounding of their enemy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1535191171
• ISBN13: 9781535191173
• Release Date: September 2016
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Kipling about revenge -- during and just prior to the Great War

A Diversity of Creatures was published in 1917, but most of the stories predate World War I, and it shows. The book resembles the just preceding adult collection, Actions and Reactions, more than it does the postwar collections such as Limits and Renewals. Indeed, I would classify A Diversity of Creatures as something of a disappointment, if only relative to Kipling's high standard. It does include one of his all-time great stories, "Mary Postgate", and one other very fine story, the odd SF piece "As Easy as A. B. C." Perhaps not surprisingly these close and open the collection. There is also the famous comic story "The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat". The most obvious recurring theme in the collection is revenge, and not always in a good way. Quite often the revenge is by characters Kipling appears to approve of against hapless or awkward antagonists, and seems out of proportion to the original offense. For example, in "The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat", a group of people in an early motorcar are caught in a sort of speed trap, clearly a revenue grab by a local Baronet. They are newspaper people, as well as an M. P. and (in another car) a theatre man. They get together to subject the village in which they were mistreated to humiliation by such means as arranging for them to be hoodwinked into voting that the Earth is flat after a presentation by a fake member of the Flat Earth Society. "As Easy as A.B.C." is a sequel to "With the Night Mail". It is set in 2065. The world by this time has become a mostly libertarian paradise, with a declining population and a horror of invasion of privacy. One form of invasion of privacy, in this formulation, is democracy, with its imposure of majority will. Paradoxically (or not), the generally libertarian nature of this society is maintained by the Draconian rule of "The A.B.C., that semi-elected, semi-nominated, body of a few score persons", as the introductory paragraph has it. In this story some members of the A.B.C. are travelling to Chicago, where it seems a few idlers and no-accounts have been assembling and trying to force votes on various issues. The other locals, horrified, call in the A.B.C. demanding that they take over -- if they don't, they say, people might get killed. And so the A.B.C., rather drastically it seemed to me, takes things in hand -- though with magic tech that supposedly won't actually really hurt anyone. Politics aside (the views put forth are, I think, purposely exaggerated for effect), I really liked the story. It seems very fresh, very science-fictional and well thought out, for all that it dates to 1912. The title character of "Mary Postgate" is a spinster hired to be companion to a well-off woman, Miss Fowler. Miss Fowler's nephew Wynn is orphaned, and she and Mary Postgate more or less raise him, until he joins the nascent Flying Corps at the outbreak of war. Soon he dies in a training accident. Through all this we gather something of Mary Postgate's rela