Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Iron Dream, 1972


The Iron Dream is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by Norman Spinrad.

The book has a nested narrative that tells a story within a story. On the surface, the novel presents an unexceptional science fiction action tale entitled Lord of the Swastika. This is a pro-fascist narrative written by an alternate history version of Adolf Hitler, who in this timeline emigrated from Germany to America and used his modest artistical skills to become first a pulp-SF illustrator and later a science fiction writer in the L. Ron Hubbard mold (telling lurid, purple-prosed adventure stories under a thin SF-veneer).


Wikipedia: The Iron Dream

Indeed, in the book Hitler seems to assume that masses of men in fetishistic uniforms marching in precise displays and displaying phallic gestures and paraphernalia will have a powerful appeal to ordinary human beings. Feric Jaggar comes to power in Heldon through little more than a grotesque series of increasingly grandiose phallic displays. This is undoubtedly phallic fetishism on the part of the author, since the alternative conclusion is to accept the ridiculous notion that an entire nation would throw itself at the feet of a leader simply on the basis of mass displays of public fetishism, orgies of blatant phallic symbolism, - and mass rallies enlivened with torchlight and rabid oratory. Obviously, such a mass national psychosis could never occur in the real world; Hitler's assumption that it not only could happen but would be an expression of so-called racial will proves that he himself was suffering from such a malady. [...]

And if this were not enough, consider the astonishing fact that not a single woman appears as a character in the book. It may be fairly said that asexuality is a hallmark of the typical science-fantasy novel; women appear only as chaste stock figures, token romantic interest for the hero, prizes to be won. However, Lord of the Swastika not only lacks this traditional romantic interest, it goes to incredible lengths to deny the very need for the female half of the human race. Finally, all reproduction is to proceed from the cloning of the all-male SS, a weird sort of male parthenogenesis.

[Norman Spinrad: The Iron Dream (p.249-250)]


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