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The Iron Dream
Set in a post-nuclear holocaust world, a novel which traces the rise to power of one Feric Jaggar, an exile among mutants and mongrels to absolute rule in the Fatherland of Truemen. With an afterword by James Sallis.
255 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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3292 people want to read
About the author
Norman Spinrad
366 books217 followersBorn in New York in 1940, Norman Spinrad is an acclaimed SF writer.
Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.
Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 259 reviews
October 21, 2025
Lord of the Swastika - Like a thick layer of stinking hot asphalt poured out on a driveway, a thick layer of racism and jingoism coats every single page of this appalling novel spun from the cramped, warped mind of an upstart writer of science fiction, a scribbler by the name of Adolf Hitler. What the hell was this clown thinking?!! To write such garbage is an act of complete irresponsibility and an insult to the reading public. We can only raise our eyes to heaven and give thanks Adolf Hitler’s vision never became reality.
I trust it is abundantly clear the above paragraph is what an outraged reviewer might have written in the alternative world author Norman Spinrad created in his 1972 novel within a novel. And what a novel! The Iron Dream was banned in Germany for eight years, from 1982 to 1990, prompting Spinrad to report how both the political left and right railed against his book – the left claiming it promotes fascism and the right asserting the novel was denigrating to a great man (Adolf Hitler). Now there’s an author who can’t win!
Turning to Spinrad's The Iron Dream itself, on the surface we are given a kitschy bit of pulp, post-apocalypse melodrama entitled Lord of the Swastika written as alternative history by one Adolf Hitler, an illustrator and hack science fiction writer who emigrated from Germany to the United States after World War 1.
Lord of the Swastika opens more than a thousand years following global nuclear war, a cataclysm which brought about the end of civilization as we know it. The gene pool of nearly all forms of human life are corrupted by radioactive fallout - humans possessing complete physical and mental health are rare; most of humanity have blue skin, lizard scales or parrot beaks, or, even more insidious, are wizened half-breed mutants or subhuman "Dominators" desiring to hold sway over the earth by their powerful mind-controlling psychic powers.
What this sorry world needs is a charismatic leader who will ruthlessly eliminate all those malignant subhumans and rid the planet forever of their odious, subversive stench. Enter Ferric Jagger. The tall, blonde, robust Jaggar takes on the role of Führer and Heldon, the land of genetically pure humans, begins to bear a striking resemblance to Nazi Germany.
Why write such a novel? Norman Spinrad tells us he wanted to demonstrate the close connection ideology of the fascist Nazi variety has with archetypal hero myths and much science fiction and fantasy - created worlds where good guys courageously combat evildoing bad guys, where the shining light of truth and justice eventually overcomes all the loathsome forces of darkness no matter where they are found - Middle Earth, Mars, or the middle of one's very own country.
And to make absolutely, positively sure even the least sophisticated, unlettered clod of a reader understood his intent, Norman informs us: “I appended a phony critical analysis of Lord of the Swastika, in which the psychopathology of Hitler's saga was spelled out by a tendentious pedant in words of one syllable.” Unfortunately, even with this laborious literary effort to reach the lowest possible readerly denominator, a number of those muddleheaded clods didn’t get it – one reviewer even took the book as an exciting action story and complained how Spinrad spoiled all the fun by adding a whole bunch of crap about Adolf Hitler.
Alas, this has always been the risk for an author of satire - even a number of jaws dropped in stunned disbelief back in the 1700s after reading Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Sad fact: masterfully constructed satire requires a degree of subtle understanding beyond the capacity of many readers. And I can assure you The Iron Dream is one such satire masterfully constructed. And much of the pleasure in reading Spinrad’s novel is to suspend critical judgement and wholeheartedly support Ferric Jagger in his quest to conquer the world.
The Iron Dream is an intensely aesthetic dream, where every pore of Helder purebred skin tingles with excitement beholding the immense power, speed, dash and style of their new society, a land where every true human vows fanatical allegiance to Ferric Jagger. Here’s an example of the glowing rhetoric enlivening nearly every page: “Behind this elite guard were first the ranks of Knight motocyclists, and then the massed might of thousands of Knights of the Swastika, all heroic figures swaggering grandly in their uniforms of brown leather, most of which were liberally spattered with the blood of the enemy.”
But, but, but . . . similar to other more famous tales of adventure and conquest from Iliad and Odyssey to Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, at some point we are obliged to close the book and return to the everyday. How much do we really want our own world to resemble that of a conquering superhero forever in the right, taking aim to blast away the forces of darkness? Is life so simple? In my modest view, The Iron Dream is a key novel for our time. Highly recommended.
"The base of the tower was a circular grandstand of steps fifty feet high upon which stood a thousand SS purebreds, the absolute cream of the elite: none under six and a half feet tall, all with flaxen hair and piercing blue eyes, and decked out in spotless tight black leather uniforms, the chrome fittings of which had been polished to the point where the setting sun flashed orange fire off thousands of diamondlike facets. Each of these superhuman specimens held a flaming torch, the crimson brilliance of which matched the hue of their flowing swastika capes." - Norman Spinrad, The Iron Dream
Norman Spinrad, Born 1940, American critic, essayist and author of more than two dozen science fiction novels.
December 21, 2008
You know those great ideas you have late at night when you're chatting with your friends after a few glasses of wine? Well, if I had been involved in writing this book, here's how I think it might have got started:
[Table is covered with the remains of what looks like a large and pleasant meal. Animated conversation.]
- ... So don't you just hate those fascist science fiction writers who sell right-wing ideologies to suggestible teens? You know, Robert Heinlein and people like that?
- I think Heinlein is more of a libertarian...
- No, no, he's a fascist. Farnham's Freehold. A bridge-playing fascist, they are absolutely the worst kind.
- OK, good point. Anything left in that bottle? Thanks. May all their slams go one off!
- Two off, doubled!
- Cheers!
- Someone should take a stand. Hey, I have an idea. Suppose we were to write a parallel world novel, where Adolf Hitler never founds the Nazi party, but instead emigrates to the US and becomes a science fiction writer.
- I think I see where this is going...
- You do indeed. So, he writes this novel called, I don't know, Lords of the Swastika, and it's a huge success, and the fans just love it. And everyone ignores the fact that the evil mind-controlling villains look just like Jews, because well it's fun and how can you take that stuff seriously. And at the conventions everyone dresses up in Nazi uniforms like they do in Swastika and goosesteps around giving Nazi salutes.
- So you're proposing we write this novel for him?
- Absolutely. We write the novel, and there is a foreword and an afterword by some academic we make up, who explains the history and why every SF fan loves Adolf so much. It'll be cool!
Now if it had been me, we could easily have had the above conversation, but I'm afraid the book would never have been written. Spinrad, I am pleased to say, actually did it. The joke wears a little thin after a while, but it is still pretty funny. If you are nursing guilt feelings for having enjoyed dreadful Fascist SF in a Kiss-of-the-Spiderwomanish way when you were too young to know better, you will almost certainly like this. Spinrad has got your number alright.
[Table is covered with the remains of what looks like a large and pleasant meal. Animated conversation.]
- ... So don't you just hate those fascist science fiction writers who sell right-wing ideologies to suggestible teens? You know, Robert Heinlein and people like that?
- I think Heinlein is more of a libertarian...
- No, no, he's a fascist. Farnham's Freehold. A bridge-playing fascist, they are absolutely the worst kind.
- OK, good point. Anything left in that bottle? Thanks. May all their slams go one off!
- Two off, doubled!
- Cheers!
- Someone should take a stand. Hey, I have an idea. Suppose we were to write a parallel world novel, where Adolf Hitler never founds the Nazi party, but instead emigrates to the US and becomes a science fiction writer.
- I think I see where this is going...
- You do indeed. So, he writes this novel called, I don't know, Lords of the Swastika, and it's a huge success, and the fans just love it. And everyone ignores the fact that the evil mind-controlling villains look just like Jews, because well it's fun and how can you take that stuff seriously. And at the conventions everyone dresses up in Nazi uniforms like they do in Swastika and goosesteps around giving Nazi salutes.
- So you're proposing we write this novel for him?
- Absolutely. We write the novel, and there is a foreword and an afterword by some academic we make up, who explains the history and why every SF fan loves Adolf so much. It'll be cool!
Now if it had been me, we could easily have had the above conversation, but I'm afraid the book would never have been written. Spinrad, I am pleased to say, actually did it. The joke wears a little thin after a while, but it is still pretty funny. If you are nursing guilt feelings for having enjoyed dreadful Fascist SF in a Kiss-of-the-Spiderwomanish way when you were too young to know better, you will almost certainly like this. Spinrad has got your number alright.
April 23, 2010
What happens when satire is misunderstood?
The point of satire is that it should be accessible on two levels simultaneously. The surface text tells one story, the subtext tells another; or to put it more accurately, the subtext tells the exact opposite story of the surface text. We might even say that the subtext reverses the polarity of the visible story, coinciding with it word for word, image for image, but in the wrong direction. In this case, the wrong way is the right way.
Writers of satire are surely always aware that their satire may be misunderstood, that the surface text might be the only one that is noticed, that they might be held responsible for holding views they despise. The history of Literature is full of examples of a general misunderstanding of rather obvious satire.
If blatant satire can be so easily misunderstood, what about the more subtle kinds of satire? Surely an author is deluding himself or herself as to their own intentions and motivations when subtlety becomes the key rule of a satirical text? These authors must be comfortable deep down with the realisation that their satire will be misunderstood. One almost wants to claim that they hope it will be misunderstood.
But why would any satirist deliberately manage affairs to encourage a misreading of their own works?
It’s clear that the psychology of such satirists is more complex than a simple desire to criticise something by mocking it. Some satires are so ambiguous that one is forced to conclude that the author has a foot in both camps, that they are pushing both messages equally, that they stand both for and against the object or force that is the subject of the satire, that in effect they are also satirising themselves and their own satire.
One of the finest satires in modern fiction must surely be The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad. First published in 1972, this novel has drawn praise from Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, James Sallis and many other influential writers and critics. In many ways it is the supreme achievement of the ‘New Wave’ movement that reinvigorated science fiction in Britain and America in the 1960s and 70s.
The central conceit behind The Iron Dream is that the grandiose dreams of most SF writers bear too many disturbing parallels with the grandiose dreams of the Nazis. In other words, the galactic empires, glorification of force and xenophobic elements found in so much science fiction betray a purely Fascistic mentality on behalf of their creators.
In Spinrad’s amazing novel, we are presented with an alternate history in which Adolf Hitler left Germany in 1919 and emigrated to New York, where he became a science fiction writer instead of a politician but with his essential psychology unchanged, a fact that made his integration into the world of pulp SF very smooth indeed. In this parallel dimension, Hitler’s greatest work is a novel entitled Lord of the Swastika, and here at last, in Spinrad’s own book, we are presented with the definitive version. But this is no novel within a novel; Hitler’s novel and Spinrad’s are identical.
The events that propel the main character, Feric Jaggar, to ultimate control over the world, and eventually the universe, parallel the rise of the real Hitler. There are analogues of the SS, the Brownshirts, the Soviets and the Weimar politicians. Instead of democrats, communists and pacifists, the enemies are mutants, mongrels and Universalists. Instead of the clichéd Jew pulling strings in the background, there is the non-human Dominator, a being capable of sapping the will of true men.
Feric Jaggar and his followers wear black leather and are constantly thrusting out their arms in phallic salutes and kissing the tips of shiny truncheons. There are no female characters in The Iron Dream. Everything is masculine and direct.
So this book is a straightforward satire against Nazi tendencies in the SF world? No. Spinrad does something more clever and devious here. He makes it impossible not to root for the wrong guys. The reader is coerced into cheering for Jaggar and his purebred warriors; the reader becomes an authentic Nazi for the duration of the novel, thrilling to the cracking of mongrel heads under the truncheons of the Sons of the Swastika, feeling delight and relief at the incineration of foul Doms by cleansing fire, wishing to participate in the utter destruction of the racially contaminated cities where parrotface mutants openly interbreed with harlequins, lizardmen and blueskins. The reader has no ambiguous feelings at all as Jaggar surges to victory. The reader is one of the bad guys too.
This is a very interesting effect. It is easy to proclaim one’s own superiority in terms of holding correct opinions. I am against prejudice of all kinds, totally opposed to racism, homophobia, sexism. And yet under the surface, perhaps not so deep, I am driven by egotism, intolerance and the lust for power. Just as you are. It’s called the Human Condition and it’s purely a tactical device to pretend that one’s stated beliefs are always representative of the way one feels. Morality isn’t really about not having evil urges, but about having evil urges and declining to act on them. While reading The Iron Dream I felt that Feric Jaggar was in the right. After finishing the book I am free to reject his values, even though I enjoyed them throughout the novel. This novel questioned me, and emotionally I gave all the wrong answers, but that doesn’t mean that my reason has to follow suit.
The point of satire is that it should be accessible on two levels simultaneously. The surface text tells one story, the subtext tells another; or to put it more accurately, the subtext tells the exact opposite story of the surface text. We might even say that the subtext reverses the polarity of the visible story, coinciding with it word for word, image for image, but in the wrong direction. In this case, the wrong way is the right way.
Writers of satire are surely always aware that their satire may be misunderstood, that the surface text might be the only one that is noticed, that they might be held responsible for holding views they despise. The history of Literature is full of examples of a general misunderstanding of rather obvious satire.
If blatant satire can be so easily misunderstood, what about the more subtle kinds of satire? Surely an author is deluding himself or herself as to their own intentions and motivations when subtlety becomes the key rule of a satirical text? These authors must be comfortable deep down with the realisation that their satire will be misunderstood. One almost wants to claim that they hope it will be misunderstood.
But why would any satirist deliberately manage affairs to encourage a misreading of their own works?
It’s clear that the psychology of such satirists is more complex than a simple desire to criticise something by mocking it. Some satires are so ambiguous that one is forced to conclude that the author has a foot in both camps, that they are pushing both messages equally, that they stand both for and against the object or force that is the subject of the satire, that in effect they are also satirising themselves and their own satire.
One of the finest satires in modern fiction must surely be The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad. First published in 1972, this novel has drawn praise from Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, James Sallis and many other influential writers and critics. In many ways it is the supreme achievement of the ‘New Wave’ movement that reinvigorated science fiction in Britain and America in the 1960s and 70s.
The central conceit behind The Iron Dream is that the grandiose dreams of most SF writers bear too many disturbing parallels with the grandiose dreams of the Nazis. In other words, the galactic empires, glorification of force and xenophobic elements found in so much science fiction betray a purely Fascistic mentality on behalf of their creators.
In Spinrad’s amazing novel, we are presented with an alternate history in which Adolf Hitler left Germany in 1919 and emigrated to New York, where he became a science fiction writer instead of a politician but with his essential psychology unchanged, a fact that made his integration into the world of pulp SF very smooth indeed. In this parallel dimension, Hitler’s greatest work is a novel entitled Lord of the Swastika, and here at last, in Spinrad’s own book, we are presented with the definitive version. But this is no novel within a novel; Hitler’s novel and Spinrad’s are identical.
The events that propel the main character, Feric Jaggar, to ultimate control over the world, and eventually the universe, parallel the rise of the real Hitler. There are analogues of the SS, the Brownshirts, the Soviets and the Weimar politicians. Instead of democrats, communists and pacifists, the enemies are mutants, mongrels and Universalists. Instead of the clichéd Jew pulling strings in the background, there is the non-human Dominator, a being capable of sapping the will of true men.
Feric Jaggar and his followers wear black leather and are constantly thrusting out their arms in phallic salutes and kissing the tips of shiny truncheons. There are no female characters in The Iron Dream. Everything is masculine and direct.
So this book is a straightforward satire against Nazi tendencies in the SF world? No. Spinrad does something more clever and devious here. He makes it impossible not to root for the wrong guys. The reader is coerced into cheering for Jaggar and his purebred warriors; the reader becomes an authentic Nazi for the duration of the novel, thrilling to the cracking of mongrel heads under the truncheons of the Sons of the Swastika, feeling delight and relief at the incineration of foul Doms by cleansing fire, wishing to participate in the utter destruction of the racially contaminated cities where parrotface mutants openly interbreed with harlequins, lizardmen and blueskins. The reader has no ambiguous feelings at all as Jaggar surges to victory. The reader is one of the bad guys too.
This is a very interesting effect. It is easy to proclaim one’s own superiority in terms of holding correct opinions. I am against prejudice of all kinds, totally opposed to racism, homophobia, sexism. And yet under the surface, perhaps not so deep, I am driven by egotism, intolerance and the lust for power. Just as you are. It’s called the Human Condition and it’s purely a tactical device to pretend that one’s stated beliefs are always representative of the way one feels. Morality isn’t really about not having evil urges, but about having evil urges and declining to act on them. While reading The Iron Dream I felt that Feric Jaggar was in the right. After finishing the book I am free to reject his values, even though I enjoyed them throughout the novel. This novel questioned me, and emotionally I gave all the wrong answers, but that doesn’t mean that my reason has to follow suit.
December 5, 2017
Don’t be fooled!
THE IRON DREAM is not the real deal! Norman Spinrad’s novel contains only a cheap copy of Adolph Hitler’s masterpiece LORD OF THE SWASTIKA. Hitler’s work is heavily abridged here and, I must say, rather tamed too. Some of the best bits are missing. The situation in the Classification Camps is hardly elaborated and the pyres of decadent books gets no mention at all. At least the glorious battle against the Zinc filth is left almost intact (Chapter 12). How Feric Jaggar blows over and over again into the slimy smelly bodies of the Zinc warriors with his mighty truncheon? Superb scenes that make every right man’s heart beat faster.
Furthermore the entire book-within-book is left out: Feric Jaggar’s novel of ideas called MY STRIFE. In it the heroic protagonist describes his life prior to becoming world leader, his frustrations, ideals, and dreams for all real humans. That’s 700+ pages, folks. Gone—just like that! Without the center piece the rest of LotS is bound to be misunderstood and must seem pretty distorted to the young and unsophisticated readers. I heard rumours that some people even consider this book a satire of some kind. How weird is that!?
At the end of the book a somewhat negative “review” by some dubious guy called Homer Whipple is added for no apparent reason. This has to be fake and I suggest you skip it if you decide to read this book. But why would you want to do that? I would rather you read the unabridged version of LotS. I added it to the GR database and will read it soon, but the entry got deleted right away by some librarian Nazi. Luckily, I was able to save a screenshot at least:
So, stay away from Spinrad’s book. It’s disfigured compared to the unblemished and pure LotS. Go try to find that. Ask the nationalist party near you; they should be able to point you in the right direction (provided you are found worthy). Good luck, and–ahem–Hail!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
July 20, 2023
There are two big questions this book's alternate world presents in my head, neither of which I'd like to dwell on too much. The first is the implication that Hitler was the only thing standing between Europe and total Soviet dominion; the second, that in the ensuing war-consumed hellhole of a world, the whole genre of fantasy literature was so utterly crippled and mutated that this sort of drek could have won any literary merit, or even be published at all.
Forgetting all the satire and taking the narrative at face value, it's really not a very good book. The main character is absurdly overpowered and perfect, with little to nothing challenging him or prompting him to change or grow. The antagonists are toothless and unthreatening, only worthy of dying en masse. All characters are pretty bland and unmemorable and have no personality traits to stand out by. And the setting is grimy and ugly and presents nothing interesting or worthwhile in either the field of science fiction or fantasy. Just a weirdly indulgent masturbatory trainwreck, a vehicle to indulge in the fantasies of a dying and delirious author too far gone to even tell apart dreams from reality.
But of course that's all part of the point. It's satire - of Hitler and his worldviews, and how uncomfortably close some old aspects of Sword & Sorcery could come to them. It's not too far exaggerated from, say, Conan. It sucks you in for a what-if story about Hitler, then gets you to think about some real-world fantasy conventions. In that sense, it's not too far off the mark.
Just that it really unsubtly hammers the point in. The story's plain unpleasant to read through, and once you get the point it's going for, there's not much else to hope for the next couple hundred pages. I don't know if it'd even been possible to make it something pleasant or worthwhile, without undermining the satire itself, but I like to think it could have been. If nothing else, it's much too long.
But it did manage to have a good point to itself, and presented a couple laughs as well, especially at the review at the end. Let's say two and a half stars.
Forgetting all the satire and taking the narrative at face value, it's really not a very good book. The main character is absurdly overpowered and perfect, with little to nothing challenging him or prompting him to change or grow. The antagonists are toothless and unthreatening, only worthy of dying en masse. All characters are pretty bland and unmemorable and have no personality traits to stand out by. And the setting is grimy and ugly and presents nothing interesting or worthwhile in either the field of science fiction or fantasy. Just a weirdly indulgent masturbatory trainwreck, a vehicle to indulge in the fantasies of a dying and delirious author too far gone to even tell apart dreams from reality.
But of course that's all part of the point. It's satire - of Hitler and his worldviews, and how uncomfortably close some old aspects of Sword & Sorcery could come to them. It's not too far exaggerated from, say, Conan. It sucks you in for a what-if story about Hitler, then gets you to think about some real-world fantasy conventions. In that sense, it's not too far off the mark.
Just that it really unsubtly hammers the point in. The story's plain unpleasant to read through, and once you get the point it's going for, there's not much else to hope for the next couple hundred pages. I don't know if it'd even been possible to make it something pleasant or worthwhile, without undermining the satire itself, but I like to think it could have been. If nothing else, it's much too long.
But it did manage to have a good point to itself, and presented a couple laughs as well, especially at the review at the end. Let's say two and a half stars.
October 14, 2021
DNF at about 20%. Despite the innovative satirical framing meta-narrative I could not push through the repetitive, inane narrative and the intolerably juvenile plot. If this were much shorter perhaps I could have mustered the strength necessary while retaining an appreciation for Spinrad's vision, but as it stands it feels like a slog for what I sense will be little to no payoff. On to greener pastures.
September 16, 2024
The Iron Dream is a fever dream. It's one thing to think up an alternate history where Adolf Hitler moved to the US in 1919 and became a pulp sci-fi writer, and it's another thing to then actually write one of his novels, dripping with fascism. It's another another another thing to then read that novel, with an epilogue discussing the book and its (by then deceased) author.
I can't imagine reading this book without already knowing about its premise. Because the Hitler-authored book is full on fascist, but also can be quite boring. I won't lie, I did start to skip through the text in the last quarter, when it's just one battle after another. Something interesting does happen towards the end, which lays the groundwork for the perfect 'true man'.
The epilogue discussing the book only really works because you've just read Adolf's horrible novel. In this alternate reality, the Nazi party only existed a couple of years, and is the footnotiest of footnotes in history. Russia, however, expanded enormously, and took over Europe and most of Asia. So the person discussing Hitler's book reads the book as an allegory about Russians and communism. Anti-semitism is mentioned, but discarded as part of the allegory (which, to our eyes, it obviously is). I also enjoyed the comment about how Hitler's power fantasy about a charismatic leader taking over a country, could never really happen. And you can see his point, on paper it sounds nuts.
It's not a book I'd readily recommend, unless like me, you are fascinated by the whole concept - 2 to 3 stars for Hitler's awful book, 4 stars for the whole thing.
I can't imagine reading this book without already knowing about its premise. Because the Hitler-authored book is full on fascist, but also can be quite boring. I won't lie, I did start to skip through the text in the last quarter, when it's just one battle after another. Something interesting does happen towards the end, which lays the groundwork for the perfect 'true man'.
The epilogue discussing the book only really works because you've just read Adolf's horrible novel. In this alternate reality, the Nazi party only existed a couple of years, and is the footnotiest of footnotes in history. Russia, however, expanded enormously, and took over Europe and most of Asia. So the person discussing Hitler's book reads the book as an allegory about Russians and communism. Anti-semitism is mentioned, but discarded as part of the allegory (which, to our eyes, it obviously is). I also enjoyed the comment about how Hitler's power fantasy about a charismatic leader taking over a country, could never really happen. And you can see his point, on paper it sounds nuts.
It's not a book I'd readily recommend, unless like me, you are fascinated by the whole concept - 2 to 3 stars for Hitler's awful book, 4 stars for the whole thing.
November 3, 2021
This is a New Wave SF alt-history post-apoc science fantasy, which is on a deeper level is a satire of the Golden Age SF, which shows that calling John W. Campbell Jr. ‘fascist’, like Jeannette Ng did on WorldCon 2019 is not really a new approach. I read it as a part of monthly reading for October 2021 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group. The novel was nominated for Nebula in 1972, but lost to The Gods Themselves.
This is a book-within-book approach, with the main story is written by an Austrian-American SF magazines’ illustrator and an important figure in 1930s-1950s US fandom. The name of the guy is almost forgotten today, one Adolf Hitler. :)
The main story, Lord of the Swastika, which takes over 95% of the book, is the most popular of Hitler’s science Fiction novels and the fandom honored it with a Hugo as Best Science Fiction Novel of 1954. It is also a source of his great cosplay materials, like Sons of Swastika (SS) uniform.
It tells the story of one Feric Jaggar, one of genotypically pure human, rare on post-apoc Earth, where the Fire of Ancients led to many degrading mutations. He is able blond blue eyed perfection and he wants to return hisFaterland land of his fathers, Helder, clear it from mutant filth and return to its former glory. There are insidious enemies, Dominators, mainly from the lands on the East of Helder, in Zind, where in slave pits they create armies of mindless ten feet warriors to conquer the world.
Jaggar finds likeminded people, gets his mighty truncheon with a fist at the end, the Steel Commander and sways people of Helder to follow him…
And the end there is a literary critic’s comments that Zind is an allusion to the USSR, which by the 1930s captured Germany and by 1948 there was a takeover of Britain that led to creation of the Greater Soviet Union. Active usage of Freudism shows not only blatantly phallic symbols of truncheon or anal worries of the author, seen in describing enemies as filthy, defecating and pissing, or his homoerotic fantasies that can be seen in the all-male cast of the story.
*sarcasm mode off*
This is a very interesting satire, which plays on context more than text – in this world Hitler is an obscure SF author, with follies of many Golder Age writers, with a tropes like a competent man, absence of woman as characters of note, straightforward and simplified good-evil axis. There are allusions to a lot of real history of Nazi Germany, from Night of the Long Knives
to the WW2 (won by Nazis) and there direct text doesn’t mock the tropes, but a context does. At the same time there is a lot of gore, alluding to both pulps and real devastation made by Nazis, so it is far from pleasant read.
This is a book-within-book approach, with the main story is written by an Austrian-American SF magazines’ illustrator and an important figure in 1930s-1950s US fandom. The name of the guy is almost forgotten today, one Adolf Hitler. :)
The main story, Lord of the Swastika, which takes over 95% of the book, is the most popular of Hitler’s science Fiction novels and the fandom honored it with a Hugo as Best Science Fiction Novel of 1954. It is also a source of his great cosplay materials, like Sons of Swastika (SS) uniform.
It tells the story of one Feric Jaggar, one of genotypically pure human, rare on post-apoc Earth, where the Fire of Ancients led to many degrading mutations. He is able blond blue eyed perfection and he wants to return his
Jaggar finds likeminded people, gets his mighty truncheon with a fist at the end, the Steel Commander and sways people of Helder to follow him…
And the end there is a literary critic’s comments that Zind is an allusion to the USSR, which by the 1930s captured Germany and by 1948 there was a takeover of Britain that led to creation of the Greater Soviet Union. Active usage of Freudism shows not only blatantly phallic symbols of truncheon or anal worries of the author, seen in describing enemies as filthy, defecating and pissing, or his homoerotic fantasies that can be seen in the all-male cast of the story.
*sarcasm mode off*
This is a very interesting satire, which plays on context more than text – in this world Hitler is an obscure SF author, with follies of many Golder Age writers, with a tropes like a competent man, absence of woman as characters of note, straightforward and simplified good-evil axis. There are allusions to a lot of real history of Nazi Germany, from Night of the Long Knives
to the WW2 (won by Nazis) and there direct text doesn’t mock the tropes, but a context does. At the same time there is a lot of gore, alluding to both pulps and real devastation made by Nazis, so it is far from pleasant read.
May 13, 2012
Update: I actually did end up finding a copy in a used bookstore for $1.49 or something and it had the cover I wanted and everything and it was awesome.
I'm freaking dying for a copy of this stupid book. I've wanted it for like a year now. All the copies on amazon are way too much money. I actually asked Spinrad about it, but he didn't know where I could get a cheap one. The hunt continues.
--------
"Let Adolph Hitler transport you to a far-future Earth, where only FERIC JAGGER and his mighty weapon, the Steel Commander, stand between the remnants of true humanity and the annihilation at the hands of the totally evil Dominators and the mindless mutant hordes they completely control. LORD OF THE SWASTIKA is recognized as the most vivid and popular of Hitler's science-fiction novels by fans the world over, who honored it with a Hugo as Best Science-Fiction Novel of 1954. Long out of print, it is now once more available in this new edition, with an Afterward by Homer Whipple of New York University. See for yourself why so many people have turned to this science-fantasy novel as a beacon of hope in these grim and terrifying times."
Finally I have gotten my hands on this book- through a friend using inter-library loan, my copy comes from the library of Texas A&M University. I hope borrowing a book like this doesn't put him on some sort of government list.
Alas, reading the pulp novel at the center of this literary work is a fairly redundant undertaking- it is literally a Nazi wet dream, a predictable celebration of violence and fascism. Lord of the Swastika's titular hero, Feric Jagger, is the ultimate anti-hero, or, as the faux- Homer Whipple says in the faux-afterward, "essentially a monster: a narcissistic psychopath with paranoid obsessions. His total self-assurance and certainty is based on a total lack of introspective and self-knowledge." He is a one-dimensional character, as are all the inhabitants of this pulpy universe- the collective human genotype brooks no sympathy toward their enemies, but neither does the reader feel any compelling desire to understand characters that are ultimately a high-meta joke.
The plot, as it were, is completely linear and follows Feric Jagger's and his Swastika comrades Battleship Potemkin/Horatio Alger-esque Rise (and no-Fall) to glory, to a predestined, inevitable conclusion, lacking any dramatic weight or suspense whatsoever. It is a story played out with a loaded deck, written by someone not playing with a full one. It can be very difficult to read, both for being so repetitive and for being so sickeningly precise and detailed in its violent fetishism. About halfway in there becomes little time for rest for either character or reader as Jagger launches campaign after tireless campaign against hordes of horrible mutant enemies, to the point that the prose reads disturbingly like the minutes of World of Warcraft or any other strategy role playing game. I must confess that I was disappointed the plot is entirely a political/military endeavor in a post-apocalyptic world- perhaps I would have warmed up to imaginary Hitler's prose if the setting was in a more science fiction or fantastical world to my liking.
Jagger is obviously a stand-in of how imaginary Hitler sees himself (Jagger is vegetarian, etc.), the rest all wish fulfillment with some historical figures thrown in (the core members of Jagger's party are obvious stand-ins for the core members of the Nazi party). It is interesting to note imaginary Hitler's obsession with motorcycles and the truncheon; where a sword would seem more violent and cliche, perhaps truncheons (and especially Jagger's Great Truncheon of Held) hold a special meaning of a purely ruthless device of brutality, and as the faux-scholar points out, the truncheon as imagery has clear phallic
undertones.
It is also interesting to note that although the Zind/Dominators are on one hand clearly a one-dimensional foe of ultimate evil, they are nonetheless, despite perhaps imaginary Hitler's best intentions, presented as a somewhat paranoiac and elusive enemy, so much so that even at the end of this messy, fatalist, vicious book I wasn't at all convinced they were capable of all they were held culpable for.
Imaginary Hitler's use of compassionate concentration camps is sickening, as is this imaginary world's commitment to orderliness, loyalty, destiny, and resolve, and how imaginary Hitler supposes we will respect Jagger for shunning nuclear weapons. The preposterous ending (in which Jagger's escalating violent destiny has nearly eclipsed even his own usefulness) would be chilling if it weren't so preposterous.
Also of note is the lack of women in the novel, which the faux-scholar makes note of.
Which brings up a point- namely, what is the point of this book-within-a-book, Lord of the Swastika? It is hard to read, purposefully written poorly (no slight accomplishment- it must have been agonizing for Spinrad to keep this narrative going on for as long as it does), and in the end only offers us a psychological study of a fake Adolph Hitler. The faux-afterward gives us a frightening portrait of an alternative history in which the Nazis never rose to power and the Soviets have conquered nearly the entire world, as well as the fake-scholar's insights into the phallic imagery of the novel. It is very good fake-scholarship, and even though it seems the tone changes halfway through, it does give the preceding bad novel its comeuppances.
In the end, this whole endeavor can be seen in two ways: an unsuspecting attack on the gullible science fiction fanbase, who worship Joseph Campbell Heroes with Charmed Objects of Power that battle Ultimate Evil (i.e. Star Wars), and read the wish fulfillment prose of L. Ron Hubbard and actually create a religion out of action-nonsense; or a cautionary tale to and from an alternate history, where the world apparently face an Ultimate Evil (the Soviets there, the Terrorists here), and, having no dastardly historical figure like our man Hitler to offer the negative side of iron resolution, truly question of themselves whether or not utter and extreme devotion to brutality in the form of a Supreme Leader is needed to "win the fight."
Fortunately, our alternate-history scholar Whipple, who is incapable of even imagining such a figure rising to power, let alone the horrors inflicted on the Jews and the world in our own historical time, comes to a sensible conclusion:
"In a sense, such a human being would be all surface and no interior. He would be able to manipulate the surface of social reality by projecting his own pathologies upon it, but he would never be able to share in the inner communion of interpersonal relationships. Such a creature could give a nation the iron leadership and sense of certainty to face a mortal crisis, but at what cost? Led by the likes of Feric Jagger, we might gain the world at the cost of our souls."
Their history is fortunate to have a monster like Feric Jagger only exist within the "confines of the pages of a science fantasy, the fever dream of a neurotic science fiction writer named Adolf Hitler." One can only hope that our very real and historical Hitler might teach us some damned lesson about the vulnerability of the human soul, which can be warped as easily, to quoth an expression fond of imaginary Hitler, as "so much fillintheblank."
As an aside, I was shaken by how the straw man approach to writing inherent in Lord of the Swastika reads so much like other science fiction I have read, especially the lesbian propaganda Daughters of a Coral Dawn: A Novel. And I also enjoyed Theodore Sturgeon's introduction, which listed five or so more books I must read, as well as illuminating to me the fact that Catch 22 was written in the style of a Bach Fugue.
I'm freaking dying for a copy of this stupid book. I've wanted it for like a year now. All the copies on amazon are way too much money. I actually asked Spinrad about it, but he didn't know where I could get a cheap one. The hunt continues.
--------
"Let Adolph Hitler transport you to a far-future Earth, where only FERIC JAGGER and his mighty weapon, the Steel Commander, stand between the remnants of true humanity and the annihilation at the hands of the totally evil Dominators and the mindless mutant hordes they completely control. LORD OF THE SWASTIKA is recognized as the most vivid and popular of Hitler's science-fiction novels by fans the world over, who honored it with a Hugo as Best Science-Fiction Novel of 1954. Long out of print, it is now once more available in this new edition, with an Afterward by Homer Whipple of New York University. See for yourself why so many people have turned to this science-fantasy novel as a beacon of hope in these grim and terrifying times."
Finally I have gotten my hands on this book- through a friend using inter-library loan, my copy comes from the library of Texas A&M University. I hope borrowing a book like this doesn't put him on some sort of government list.
Alas, reading the pulp novel at the center of this literary work is a fairly redundant undertaking- it is literally a Nazi wet dream, a predictable celebration of violence and fascism. Lord of the Swastika's titular hero, Feric Jagger, is the ultimate anti-hero, or, as the faux- Homer Whipple says in the faux-afterward, "essentially a monster: a narcissistic psychopath with paranoid obsessions. His total self-assurance and certainty is based on a total lack of introspective and self-knowledge." He is a one-dimensional character, as are all the inhabitants of this pulpy universe- the collective human genotype brooks no sympathy toward their enemies, but neither does the reader feel any compelling desire to understand characters that are ultimately a high-meta joke.
The plot, as it were, is completely linear and follows Feric Jagger's and his Swastika comrades Battleship Potemkin/Horatio Alger-esque Rise (and no-Fall) to glory, to a predestined, inevitable conclusion, lacking any dramatic weight or suspense whatsoever. It is a story played out with a loaded deck, written by someone not playing with a full one. It can be very difficult to read, both for being so repetitive and for being so sickeningly precise and detailed in its violent fetishism. About halfway in there becomes little time for rest for either character or reader as Jagger launches campaign after tireless campaign against hordes of horrible mutant enemies, to the point that the prose reads disturbingly like the minutes of World of Warcraft or any other strategy role playing game. I must confess that I was disappointed the plot is entirely a political/military endeavor in a post-apocalyptic world- perhaps I would have warmed up to imaginary Hitler's prose if the setting was in a more science fiction or fantastical world to my liking.
Jagger is obviously a stand-in of how imaginary Hitler sees himself (Jagger is vegetarian, etc.), the rest all wish fulfillment with some historical figures thrown in (the core members of Jagger's party are obvious stand-ins for the core members of the Nazi party). It is interesting to note imaginary Hitler's obsession with motorcycles and the truncheon; where a sword would seem more violent and cliche, perhaps truncheons (and especially Jagger's Great Truncheon of Held) hold a special meaning of a purely ruthless device of brutality, and as the faux-scholar points out, the truncheon as imagery has clear phallic
undertones.
It is also interesting to note that although the Zind/Dominators are on one hand clearly a one-dimensional foe of ultimate evil, they are nonetheless, despite perhaps imaginary Hitler's best intentions, presented as a somewhat paranoiac and elusive enemy, so much so that even at the end of this messy, fatalist, vicious book I wasn't at all convinced they were capable of all they were held culpable for.
Imaginary Hitler's use of compassionate concentration camps is sickening, as is this imaginary world's commitment to orderliness, loyalty, destiny, and resolve, and how imaginary Hitler supposes we will respect Jagger for shunning nuclear weapons. The preposterous ending (in which Jagger's escalating violent destiny has nearly eclipsed even his own usefulness) would be chilling if it weren't so preposterous.
Also of note is the lack of women in the novel, which the faux-scholar makes note of.
Which brings up a point- namely, what is the point of this book-within-a-book, Lord of the Swastika? It is hard to read, purposefully written poorly (no slight accomplishment- it must have been agonizing for Spinrad to keep this narrative going on for as long as it does), and in the end only offers us a psychological study of a fake Adolph Hitler. The faux-afterward gives us a frightening portrait of an alternative history in which the Nazis never rose to power and the Soviets have conquered nearly the entire world, as well as the fake-scholar's insights into the phallic imagery of the novel. It is very good fake-scholarship, and even though it seems the tone changes halfway through, it does give the preceding bad novel its comeuppances.
In the end, this whole endeavor can be seen in two ways: an unsuspecting attack on the gullible science fiction fanbase, who worship Joseph Campbell Heroes with Charmed Objects of Power that battle Ultimate Evil (i.e. Star Wars), and read the wish fulfillment prose of L. Ron Hubbard and actually create a religion out of action-nonsense; or a cautionary tale to and from an alternate history, where the world apparently face an Ultimate Evil (the Soviets there, the Terrorists here), and, having no dastardly historical figure like our man Hitler to offer the negative side of iron resolution, truly question of themselves whether or not utter and extreme devotion to brutality in the form of a Supreme Leader is needed to "win the fight."
Fortunately, our alternate-history scholar Whipple, who is incapable of even imagining such a figure rising to power, let alone the horrors inflicted on the Jews and the world in our own historical time, comes to a sensible conclusion:
"In a sense, such a human being would be all surface and no interior. He would be able to manipulate the surface of social reality by projecting his own pathologies upon it, but he would never be able to share in the inner communion of interpersonal relationships. Such a creature could give a nation the iron leadership and sense of certainty to face a mortal crisis, but at what cost? Led by the likes of Feric Jagger, we might gain the world at the cost of our souls."
Their history is fortunate to have a monster like Feric Jagger only exist within the "confines of the pages of a science fantasy, the fever dream of a neurotic science fiction writer named Adolf Hitler." One can only hope that our very real and historical Hitler might teach us some damned lesson about the vulnerability of the human soul, which can be warped as easily, to quoth an expression fond of imaginary Hitler, as "so much fillintheblank."
As an aside, I was shaken by how the straw man approach to writing inherent in Lord of the Swastika reads so much like other science fiction I have read, especially the lesbian propaganda Daughters of a Coral Dawn: A Novel. And I also enjoyed Theodore Sturgeon's introduction, which listed five or so more books I must read, as well as illuminating to me the fact that Catch 22 was written in the style of a Bach Fugue.
October 26, 2023
Check out my full, spoiler lite, video review HERE. Very unique and bizarre book within a book following the writing of Hitler in and alternate history. Smartly put together but very non-typical, make sure you’re in the right mood for this one.
August 20, 2023
Ten out of five stars for the concept and twenty out of five for the cover illustration, the actual book though….
This book is presented as if it dropped into our hands from an alternate universe where the nazis never came to power and that universe’s Adolph Hitler moved to America, became a science fiction author and wrote this book. It’s written as if Hitler was the author.
The book is set in a post apocalyptic future where the world is full of disgusting, defecating, putrid, revolting, slime covered, mutants, genetic nightmares, children of hell in living, breathing, pulsating masses of tormented flesh!!!!
These base creatures, who will stop at nothing until they’ve drooled and shat on absolutely everything are an affront to the existence of the true, genetic race of men and only one man can lead them in an extremely gory and descriptive campaign to wipe out every last mutation from the face of the earth: Feric Jagger!
Jagger is a self important, ruthless super duper prick who literally rules with an iron fist. It would be a real accomplishment to get more phallic without whipping your dick out and beating people senseless with it.
Most of the book was fun because it’s so over the top, the problem is that it’s very repetitive. Jagger never encounters serious resistance to achieving any of his goals. I’m sure Spinrad meant this to come off as a wish fulfillment power fantasy (and a homoerotic one at that) of Hitler but the second half of the book feels like the same battle scene copy pasted over and over.
The mutants hog out dirt snakes on all they survey while Jagger rides up on his motorcycle in extra tight, shiny, black, leather with swastika cape and just decimates them all with his truncheon, rinse repeat.
I think it would be a better read if they had interspersed this story with snippets of Hitler’s life as a writer in America. On it’s own this story is just a bit much.
This book is presented as if it dropped into our hands from an alternate universe where the nazis never came to power and that universe’s Adolph Hitler moved to America, became a science fiction author and wrote this book. It’s written as if Hitler was the author.
The book is set in a post apocalyptic future where the world is full of disgusting, defecating, putrid, revolting, slime covered, mutants, genetic nightmares, children of hell in living, breathing, pulsating masses of tormented flesh!!!!
These base creatures, who will stop at nothing until they’ve drooled and shat on absolutely everything are an affront to the existence of the true, genetic race of men and only one man can lead them in an extremely gory and descriptive campaign to wipe out every last mutation from the face of the earth: Feric Jagger!
Jagger is a self important, ruthless super duper prick who literally rules with an iron fist. It would be a real accomplishment to get more phallic without whipping your dick out and beating people senseless with it.
Most of the book was fun because it’s so over the top, the problem is that it’s very repetitive. Jagger never encounters serious resistance to achieving any of his goals. I’m sure Spinrad meant this to come off as a wish fulfillment power fantasy (and a homoerotic one at that) of Hitler but the second half of the book feels like the same battle scene copy pasted over and over.
The mutants hog out dirt snakes on all they survey while Jagger rides up on his motorcycle in extra tight, shiny, black, leather with swastika cape and just decimates them all with his truncheon, rinse repeat.
I think it would be a better read if they had interspersed this story with snippets of Hitler’s life as a writer in America. On it’s own this story is just a bit much.
December 8, 2017
Nachdem ich mich mit eisernem Willen durch dieses Buch gekämpft habe, bleibt mir als Fazit nur zu sagen: Adolf Hitler war ein hundsmiserabler Science-Fiction-Autor. Das Nachwort von Homer Whipple fasst meine Einwände gegen dieses Machwerk prägnant zusammen. Es ist vollkommen entbehrlich, dem noch etwas hinzufügen zu wollen. (Aber den Leser für dieses magere Fazit durch diesen Schund zu jagen, grenzt an Folter.)
January 25, 2012
This is a spoiler-ific review. So the premise is Hitler has a falling out with the Nazis in their infancy and emigrates to America where he paints pulp fiction covers and becomes a semi-respected writer himself, spawning a Nazi-inspired fashion trend with his penultimate novel, Lord of The Swastika (the book within the book The Iron Dream, about the last true human state in a post apocalyptic world of mutants and mind controlling Dominators). In the bookend world in which Hitler wrote, Germany and Europe has fallen to Communism and only America and Japan remain (sort of suggesting Hitler was the man who stopped the advance of communism?). As others have stated, it's a send up both of Nazism and male oriented sword and sorcery/fantasy/sci-fi, written as badly as the author thinks that genre tends to be written. It's basically a joke that could have been told in a hundred pages or so. By the time I got to one hundred I was flipping ahead to see how much more of this there actually was. The writing is repetetitive, with lots of 'gleaming steel' and 'tight black leather' and 'feeling the racial will,' etc. I get the joke, but it goes on a little too long till it gets uncomfortable (again, part of the joke - you're supposed to be uncomfortable reading about Feric Jaggar and his Aryan buds stoving in mutant skulls and spraying submachinegun bullets into a mixed race orgy at one point). There are some very cool and memorable moments in here, especially Feric seizing the leadership of the Avengers biker gang. Felt like a Roger Corman movie or something without the beautiful women. One thing I'm kinda suprised no one has mentioned is the fact that Feric, the hero of the story, seems to be a Dominator. The Dominators of Zind are the main bad guys of the novel, being a combination of Russian Communists and Jews. They are able to infiltrate the heroic true human country of Heldon by setting up these 'dominance patterns,' sapping the will of Heldons and controlling them to their own ends. Isn't that exactly what Feric does upon coming to Heldon only on a massive scale? It's said early on that his father was expelled from Heldon (not for genetic impurity but for political reasons, he rather hastily states, it seems) and that Feric was born in a mutant country. He ascends so rapidly to the leadership of Heldon, and there are so many references to his channeling and directing the racial will of the people, that it's pretty clear to me he's intended to be a self-hating Dom. There's a lot of excessive fetishism in here, with the SS eventually propagating their species asexually and literally launching their seed up into space to 'fecundate that stars.' Ultimately it ebbs and flows in terms of enjoyment. I gotta admit I skimmed through a lot of the battles at the end. The subhuman mutants are sufficiently disgusting and the violence is orgiastically described at times. The characters are extremely one dimensional. There's not really much conflict and Feric and his buds for the most part are portrayed as flawless and always in the right, even when they're declaring the need to sterilize the irradiated populace (who for their part squabble good naturedly over who will be the first in line to sacrifice their procreative abilities for the racial glory of Heldon! Sure sounds like a mind controlled populace to me...). The denouement at the close written by an in-universe critic sort of hits you over the head with what should be the obviously ridiculous and fetishistic conventions that you've just slogged through. It feels like the author explaining an overlong and unfunny joke. But I understand this was written after the initial publication to dissuade some of the folks who thought it was for real and a good story to boot. Apparently the book was showing up on the recommended reading lists of various Aryan and neo-Nazi groups and Spinrad felt the need to knock on their skulls a bit. Out of curiosity I googled 'The Iron Dream Norman Spinrad recommendation' and was directed to an Aryan Unity site wherein the critic proceeded to do just that, urging the reader to 'keep an open mind' (!) and ignore the 'usual psychological views' espoused in the end essay and even suggesting at the end that it was a 'rousing adventure' that could make a 'good White Nationalist recruitment novelette,' so I guess it didn't work anyway. Points for getting Michael Moorcock to plug it on the cover as 'Adolf Hitler's classic bestseller of future genetic warfare - exciting and tense!'
April 24, 2012
The concept behind this book is great and made me laugh with glee. Adolf Hitler as a hack science fiction writer? Just too good! The front even includes a list of "Other Books by the Author" that stars such alluring titles as "Tomorrow, The World" and "The master Race", and a little biography of Hitler, the SF writer/illustrator.
The story itself purports to be a book called Lord of the Swastika, and the narrator is clearly a stand-in for Hitler himself. In fact, the early parts of the book mirror in some ways Hitler's release from prison and attempts to re-establish himself in 1920s Germany. His ascension to power is a glorious, rocket-propelled explosion of might and...glory!
But wait. The book isn't very good. Did I need to tell you that? Hitler was never renouned for his paintings, and Spinrad seems to have kept this in mind while writing a story from the point of view of "Hitler the Artist". It is an interesting thought experiment but I could barely stay with it all the way through. I recognise what Spinrad was trying to do and on one level I laud him for it, but on the other I think it's a bit nasty. I was born in 1980 but enjoy reading plenty of "Golden Age SF" stuff, and no, I don't generally agree that much of it reads like Nazi/Aryan supremacy fantasies, even if some stories do tend to be a bit one-sided and reprehensible in certain aspects (this book did sort of remind me of something like Francis Moulon's Armageddon 2419). It also helps that quite a bit of the Golden Age stuff is simply better written than this. I've read some short stuff by Spinrad and I know he's a pretty capable writer, but for the sake of the metafiction he's chopped his fingers (or maybe a part of his brain) off for this one, and it just isn't very pleasing.
To alleviate the pain you may suffer while reading this book, I suggest the following....The Iron Dream Drinking Game!
Take a shot of something strong every time....:
1. the word Swastika is invoked.
2. The protagonist/Hitler goes all starry-eyed and ga-ga describing how beautifully someone's uniform is polished or how colourful/multifarious be their decorations.
3. You see an exclamation mark.
4. The protagonist/Hitler appeals to a sense of justice/past glory.
5. The protagonist/Hitler goes all starry-eyed and ga-ga describing the beautiful lines and contours of a machine.
6. You detect homoerotic undercurrents.
That's all I've got for now, but using these principels alone, you should be on the floor kicking and begging for mercy within a few dozen pages. Wake up and try it again tomorrow! Hours of fun!
The story itself purports to be a book called Lord of the Swastika, and the narrator is clearly a stand-in for Hitler himself. In fact, the early parts of the book mirror in some ways Hitler's release from prison and attempts to re-establish himself in 1920s Germany. His ascension to power is a glorious, rocket-propelled explosion of might and...glory!
But wait. The book isn't very good. Did I need to tell you that? Hitler was never renouned for his paintings, and Spinrad seems to have kept this in mind while writing a story from the point of view of "Hitler the Artist". It is an interesting thought experiment but I could barely stay with it all the way through. I recognise what Spinrad was trying to do and on one level I laud him for it, but on the other I think it's a bit nasty. I was born in 1980 but enjoy reading plenty of "Golden Age SF" stuff, and no, I don't generally agree that much of it reads like Nazi/Aryan supremacy fantasies, even if some stories do tend to be a bit one-sided and reprehensible in certain aspects (this book did sort of remind me of something like Francis Moulon's Armageddon 2419). It also helps that quite a bit of the Golden Age stuff is simply better written than this. I've read some short stuff by Spinrad and I know he's a pretty capable writer, but for the sake of the metafiction he's chopped his fingers (or maybe a part of his brain) off for this one, and it just isn't very pleasing.
To alleviate the pain you may suffer while reading this book, I suggest the following....The Iron Dream Drinking Game!
Take a shot of something strong every time....:
1. the word Swastika is invoked.
2. The protagonist/Hitler goes all starry-eyed and ga-ga describing how beautifully someone's uniform is polished or how colourful/multifarious be their decorations.
3. You see an exclamation mark.
4. The protagonist/Hitler appeals to a sense of justice/past glory.
5. The protagonist/Hitler goes all starry-eyed and ga-ga describing the beautiful lines and contours of a machine.
6. You detect homoerotic undercurrents.
That's all I've got for now, but using these principels alone, you should be on the floor kicking and begging for mercy within a few dozen pages. Wake up and try it again tomorrow! Hours of fun!
April 22, 2020
The Iron Dream is probably the best-known (or at least most notorious) of the books by Norman Spinrad. Formally, the book can be seen as the mixture of an alternate history novel and a found manuscript novel. The book purports to be the second edition of the Hugo-winning science fiction novel Lord of the Swastika by Adolf Hitler, an Austrian-born artist who emigrated to the US in 1919 and made a living as a translator and illustrator, before he began to write his own pulp novels, culminating in his last and greatest work, the present novel. The book consists of three parts, with Hitler's (fictitious) novel itself being book-ended by a short biographical introduction to Hitler and his work, and a literary analysis by "Homer Whipple" as an afterword.
The bio establishes Hitler as a successful pulp writer, popular at conventions, who finished the novel in 1953 shortly before his death, and won a posthumous Hugo for it in 1955.
The inner novel, Lord of the Swastika, takes up 250 of the 273 pages in the Kindle edition. It tells the story of Ferric Jaggar, a "genetically pure Trueman", who returns from his childhood exile to Heldon, the one remaining country of "true humanity" in the world. One thousand years after a devastating nuclear war, "mutants" have taken over all other countries. In Heldon, Jaggar meets and befriends a motorcycle gang, which happens to hold the "Steel Commander", the great Truncheon of the ancient King "Stal Held" and symbol of royal power, which only a true genetic descendant of Stal Held could wield. Of course, Jaggar turns out to have the right genetic patterns. He forms the motorcycle gang into his "Knights of the Swastika", and, using them (SA style) in street fighting, rises to power over the weak and ineffective government (controlled, as much of everything bad in Heldon, by the evil Dominators via their psychic powers). Once in power, Jaggar modernises the army, cleanses Helder society of genetic impurities (with many of the less fortuitous citizens gladly choosing "sterilisation for the Fatherland"), forms the "Swastika Squad" (SS) of genetically particularly valuable "blond giants", and then proceeds on a campaign to rid the world of evil mutants and Dominators once and for all. During the final victory, the last Dominator of Zind explodes another doomsday bomb, "poisoning the germ plasm of every true human". Jaggar immediately has himself and every Helder sterilized to avoid the creation of new mutants, and relies on his "fanatic SS scientists", who manage to produce "perfect purebred clones" of the very best SS men (yes, men only - humanity will no longer rely on "the vagary of chance" for reproduction). The book ends with the first spaceship carrying a load of clones to settle on Tau Ceti, and then to settle the universe with perfect clones of the SS (lead, of course, by clones of Jaggar himself).
Jaggar's rise to power is heavily modelled on Hitler's rise in our timeline. He takes over a small radical party, he meets a Göring-equivalent who helps him connects to the regular army, there is an equivalent to the Röhm purge, to the division of Poland, and so on. I found this one of the weaker aspects of the novel. There really is no reason for this parallelism within the meta-narrative of the whole book, and it is somewhat distracting.
In general, the novel-within-the-novel is hard to enjoy. It's plotting is basic at best, and the writing is painfully bad. The book is full of Germanisms and the chains of adjectives put Robert E. Howard to shame. Often, one has the impression that the author tries to show off a large vocabulary, but was using a thesaurus, and not always got a proper near-synonym. Large parts of the book are highly repetitive - either describing massive battles in which the Aryan supermen of the SS on their gleaming motorcycles massacre the hordes of Zind, or describing endless parades, victory or otherwise, with troops marching in unison to torchlight, hailing Jaggar over and over while giving the party salute. There is a phallic symbolism present that is so obvious, it did not need "Homer Whipple" pointing it out in the afterword, and the permanent description of the "tight black leather uniforms of the SS" borders on fetishism.
Spinrad's novel ends with a (fictitious) afterword by a literary critic, giving a bit more context to the world the book was (allegedly) written in. The analysis is somewhat amusing in that "Whipple" describes most of the features of the novel as the result not of careful planning, but of a somewhat deranged subconscious, when we, the readers, are of course aware of the fact that Spinrad indeed carefully planned all these elements (and their discussion in the afterword).
The book has a checkered publication history in Germany. The translation was published by Heyne, probably the leading publisher of quality science fiction, in a 1981 paperback edition, which also featured illustrations and adorned the bio with a picture of Hitler "waiting in Hugo Gernsback's office". The book was immediately challenged as promoting Nazism, and, as a result, was put on the "Index of youth-endangering writings" in 1982. In practice, this means that the book could not be marketed through normal channels (though it could still be bought by adults on request), and Heyne pulped most of the remaining first edition. They publisher did challenge the ruling, though, and won a court victory in 1985, and a final verdict in favour of the book in 1987. It currently is available in a 2014 paperback edition in German.
I've originally read the German edition about 30 years ago, grabbing one of the first edition books from a used book store, where it escaped pulping. Back then, I did not quite understand what the fuss was all about. I've now read the Gateway edition in the original English, and I see a lot more in the book now. Of course, Spinrad makes fun of Hitler as a low-pulp writer. But he also caricatures the genre in a way that I still find relevant today. Jaggar lives in a world of absolute moral certainty. Whatever he does is right - not because it makes sense, or because he has a stringent justification, but because the author constructs the world in a way that even Jaggar's most deranged illusions are true. There is no room for doubt - whoever is in Jaggar's way gets just enough time to confess his intend to kill all true humans, before he is pulped by the Steel Commander. Spinrad masterfully exposes this trick in the end, by providing a conclusion that, while described as a utopia within the story, is so obviously dystopic that it breaks the spell for every reader (or at least should break it - apparently there were some very few right-wing reviewers who did not get it).
While the writing is over-the-top bad (even by 1955 standards), this justification of ideology by world-building is something I still see in a lot of military SF today - even from prime specimen like David Weber.
I suspect there are three reasons for the different perceptions I have of the German and the English editions: First, the early pulps never were successful and popular in Germany, and our own (mostly later) pulps used quite different mannerisms. So the degree to which Spinrad used and caricatured genre conventions was largely lost in translation. Similarly, "Hitler's" language, English with many Germanisms, of course, loses a lot of its peculiarity when translated to German. And third, I myself am 30 years and a few hundred books older.
There is a lot more that could be said about The Iron Dream, but to come to a conclusion: I think this is an important book for the science fiction genre, in that is delivers a stark warning about how easy it is to use its conventions to justify even the most deranged ideology. Still, it's not a book for everyone, and in particular not for people who want to have a good laugh about how bad a writer Hitler would have been. I'd only recommend it for people with a strong stomach who are interested in the genre, its development, and its internal discussions. But for these, it's highly recommended.
The bio establishes Hitler as a successful pulp writer, popular at conventions, who finished the novel in 1953 shortly before his death, and won a posthumous Hugo for it in 1955.
The inner novel, Lord of the Swastika, takes up 250 of the 273 pages in the Kindle edition. It tells the story of Ferric Jaggar, a "genetically pure Trueman", who returns from his childhood exile to Heldon, the one remaining country of "true humanity" in the world. One thousand years after a devastating nuclear war, "mutants" have taken over all other countries. In Heldon, Jaggar meets and befriends a motorcycle gang, which happens to hold the "Steel Commander", the great Truncheon of the ancient King "Stal Held" and symbol of royal power, which only a true genetic descendant of Stal Held could wield. Of course, Jaggar turns out to have the right genetic patterns. He forms the motorcycle gang into his "Knights of the Swastika", and, using them (SA style) in street fighting, rises to power over the weak and ineffective government (controlled, as much of everything bad in Heldon, by the evil Dominators via their psychic powers). Once in power, Jaggar modernises the army, cleanses Helder society of genetic impurities (with many of the less fortuitous citizens gladly choosing "sterilisation for the Fatherland"), forms the "Swastika Squad" (SS) of genetically particularly valuable "blond giants", and then proceeds on a campaign to rid the world of evil mutants and Dominators once and for all. During the final victory, the last Dominator of Zind explodes another doomsday bomb, "poisoning the germ plasm of every true human". Jaggar immediately has himself and every Helder sterilized to avoid the creation of new mutants, and relies on his "fanatic SS scientists", who manage to produce "perfect purebred clones" of the very best SS men (yes, men only - humanity will no longer rely on "the vagary of chance" for reproduction). The book ends with the first spaceship carrying a load of clones to settle on Tau Ceti, and then to settle the universe with perfect clones of the SS (lead, of course, by clones of Jaggar himself).
Jaggar's rise to power is heavily modelled on Hitler's rise in our timeline. He takes over a small radical party, he meets a Göring-equivalent who helps him connects to the regular army, there is an equivalent to the Röhm purge, to the division of Poland, and so on. I found this one of the weaker aspects of the novel. There really is no reason for this parallelism within the meta-narrative of the whole book, and it is somewhat distracting.
In general, the novel-within-the-novel is hard to enjoy. It's plotting is basic at best, and the writing is painfully bad. The book is full of Germanisms and the chains of adjectives put Robert E. Howard to shame. Often, one has the impression that the author tries to show off a large vocabulary, but was using a thesaurus, and not always got a proper near-synonym. Large parts of the book are highly repetitive - either describing massive battles in which the Aryan supermen of the SS on their gleaming motorcycles massacre the hordes of Zind, or describing endless parades, victory or otherwise, with troops marching in unison to torchlight, hailing Jaggar over and over while giving the party salute. There is a phallic symbolism present that is so obvious, it did not need "Homer Whipple" pointing it out in the afterword, and the permanent description of the "tight black leather uniforms of the SS" borders on fetishism.
Spinrad's novel ends with a (fictitious) afterword by a literary critic, giving a bit more context to the world the book was (allegedly) written in. The analysis is somewhat amusing in that "Whipple" describes most of the features of the novel as the result not of careful planning, but of a somewhat deranged subconscious, when we, the readers, are of course aware of the fact that Spinrad indeed carefully planned all these elements (and their discussion in the afterword).
The book has a checkered publication history in Germany. The translation was published by Heyne, probably the leading publisher of quality science fiction, in a 1981 paperback edition, which also featured illustrations and adorned the bio with a picture of Hitler "waiting in Hugo Gernsback's office". The book was immediately challenged as promoting Nazism, and, as a result, was put on the "Index of youth-endangering writings" in 1982. In practice, this means that the book could not be marketed through normal channels (though it could still be bought by adults on request), and Heyne pulped most of the remaining first edition. They publisher did challenge the ruling, though, and won a court victory in 1985, and a final verdict in favour of the book in 1987. It currently is available in a 2014 paperback edition in German.
I've originally read the German edition about 30 years ago, grabbing one of the first edition books from a used book store, where it escaped pulping. Back then, I did not quite understand what the fuss was all about. I've now read the Gateway edition in the original English, and I see a lot more in the book now. Of course, Spinrad makes fun of Hitler as a low-pulp writer. But he also caricatures the genre in a way that I still find relevant today. Jaggar lives in a world of absolute moral certainty. Whatever he does is right - not because it makes sense, or because he has a stringent justification, but because the author constructs the world in a way that even Jaggar's most deranged illusions are true. There is no room for doubt - whoever is in Jaggar's way gets just enough time to confess his intend to kill all true humans, before he is pulped by the Steel Commander. Spinrad masterfully exposes this trick in the end, by providing a conclusion that, while described as a utopia within the story, is so obviously dystopic that it breaks the spell for every reader (or at least should break it - apparently there were some very few right-wing reviewers who did not get it).
While the writing is over-the-top bad (even by 1955 standards), this justification of ideology by world-building is something I still see in a lot of military SF today - even from prime specimen like David Weber.
I suspect there are three reasons for the different perceptions I have of the German and the English editions: First, the early pulps never were successful and popular in Germany, and our own (mostly later) pulps used quite different mannerisms. So the degree to which Spinrad used and caricatured genre conventions was largely lost in translation. Similarly, "Hitler's" language, English with many Germanisms, of course, loses a lot of its peculiarity when translated to German. And third, I myself am 30 years and a few hundred books older.
There is a lot more that could be said about The Iron Dream, but to come to a conclusion: I think this is an important book for the science fiction genre, in that is delivers a stark warning about how easy it is to use its conventions to justify even the most deranged ideology. Still, it's not a book for everyone, and in particular not for people who want to have a good laugh about how bad a writer Hitler would have been. I'd only recommend it for people with a strong stomach who are interested in the genre, its development, and its internal discussions. But for these, it's highly recommended.
October 2, 2020
Το "Σιδερένιο Όνειρο" είναι ένα βιβλίο μέσα σε ένα βιβλίο. Ο Σπίνραντ επινοεί κριτικούς της λογοτεχνίας που συντάσσουν μια εισαγωγή και ένα κριτικό επίλογο στο έργο "ο Άρχοντας της Σβάστικας", το υποτιθέμενο αριστούργημα του συγγραφέα επιστημονικής φαντασίας Αδόλφου Χίτλερ! Το κυρίως έργο αποτελεί μια επανεγγραφή των σημαντικότερων στιγμών της ναζιστικής επέλασης κατά τον B' Π.Π. με αλλοιωμένη προς το ναζιστικότερον την έκβαση της επιχείρησης Barbarossa σε ενα post-apocalyptic, steampunk φουτουριστικό περιβάλλον.
Το αστείο, θεωρητικά, θα έπρεπε να είναι ορατό από πρώτη ματιά αλλά παραδόξως το βιβλίο μπήκε στη λίστα προτεινόμενων αναγνωσμάτων από το Αμερικανικό Ναζιστικό Κόμμα όταν πρωτοδημοσιεύθηκε το 1972!
Σε κάθε περίπτωση η σύλληψη του Σπίνραντ υπήρξε ενδιαφέρουσα: μέσα από ένα φρικτά κλισέ "μυθιστόρημα" φασιστικής φαντασιοπληξίας (και υπάρχουν άπειρα τέτοια ακόμα και στην εγχώρια σύγχρονη παραλογοτεχνία) να ειρωνευτεί την υποβόσκουσα ψύχωση των περισσότερων έργων "ηρωϊκής" (αλλά συχνά και επιστημονικής) φαντασίας.
Ταυτόχρονα δηλωμένη πρόθεση είναι και να προκαλέσει τον αναγνώστη (υποψιασμένο ή μη) να τεστάρει την προσωπική του/της δεκτικότητα σε υπεράνθρωπες ηγετικές μορφές και στην ρητορική της "θέλησης για δύναμη".
Αν και ευφυές σαν σύλληψη, το βιβλίο καταντά τόσο βαρετό, επαναλαμβανόμενο και ρηχό, που σε κάνει να αναρωτιέσαι αν αξίζει το κόπο και τον χρόνο που απαιτείται για να το ολοκληρώσεις. Ο επινοημένος σχολιαστής του επιλόγου το αναγνωρίζει, μετατρέποντας έτσι το όλο εγχείρημα από κακογουστο αστείο σε μια κοινωνιολογική άσκηση.
Ως τέτοια και μόνο το "Σιδερένιο Όνειρο" αξίζει μια πλάγια ανάγνωση. Αλλά ακόμα και ως σκάφανδρο βύθισης στο έρεβος της ρατσιστικής ψυχοσύνθεσης θεωρώ ότι υπάρχουν πολύ καλύτερα εργαλεία εκεί έξω. Όπως και το αντίστοιχο εγχείρημα του Alan Moore με τους Watchmen, το βιβλίο μού έδωσε την εντύπωση ότι πέφτει θύμα της ρηχότητας που επιχειρεί να υποσκάψει.
Παρά την επικαιρότητα του στον μέτα - Trump δυτικό μας πολιτισμο, χίλιες φορές να διαβάσω τους μέντορες του ναζισμού στη λατινοαμερικάνικη λογοτεχνία - υπαρκτούς ή σχεδόν υπαρκτούς - κατά τον Roberto Bolaño!
Το αστείο, θεωρητικά, θα έπρεπε να είναι ορατό από πρώτη ματιά αλλά παραδόξως το βιβλίο μπήκε στη λίστα προτεινόμενων αναγνωσμάτων από το Αμερικανικό Ναζιστικό Κόμμα όταν πρωτοδημοσιεύθηκε το 1972!
Σε κάθε περίπτωση η σύλληψη του Σπίνραντ υπήρξε ενδιαφέρουσα: μέσα από ένα φρικτά κλισέ "μυθιστόρημα" φασιστικής φαντασιοπληξίας (και υπάρχουν άπειρα τέτοια ακόμα και στην εγχώρια σύγχρονη παραλογοτεχνία) να ειρωνευτεί την υποβόσκουσα ψύχωση των περισσότερων έργων "ηρωϊκής" (αλλά συχνά και επιστημονικής) φαντασίας.
Ταυτόχρονα δηλωμένη πρόθεση είναι και να προκαλέσει τον αναγνώστη (υποψιασμένο ή μη) να τεστάρει την προσωπική του/της δεκτικότητα σε υπεράνθρωπες ηγετικές μορφές και στην ρητορική της "θέλησης για δύναμη".
Αν και ευφυές σαν σύλληψη, το βιβλίο καταντά τόσο βαρετό, επαναλαμβανόμενο και ρηχό, που σε κάνει να αναρωτιέσαι αν αξίζει το κόπο και τον χρόνο που απαιτείται για να το ολοκληρώσεις. Ο επινοημένος σχολιαστής του επιλόγου το αναγνωρίζει, μετατρέποντας έτσι το όλο εγχείρημα από κακογουστο αστείο σε μια κοινωνιολογική άσκηση.
Ως τέτοια και μόνο το "Σιδερένιο Όνειρο" αξίζει μια πλάγια ανάγνωση. Αλλά ακόμα και ως σκάφανδρο βύθισης στο έρεβος της ρατσιστικής ψυχοσύνθεσης θεωρώ ότι υπάρχουν πολύ καλύτερα εργαλεία εκεί έξω. Όπως και το αντίστοιχο εγχείρημα του Alan Moore με τους Watchmen, το βιβλίο μού έδωσε την εντύπωση ότι πέφτει θύμα της ρηχότητας που επιχειρεί να υποσκάψει.
Παρά την επικαιρότητα του στον μέτα - Trump δυτικό μας πολιτισμο, χίλιες φορές να διαβάσω τους μέντορες του ναζισμού στη λατινοαμερικάνικη λογοτεχνία - υπαρκτούς ή σχεδόν υπαρκτούς - κατά τον Roberto Bolaño!
May 25, 2009
I learned that a strong concept doesn't get you anywhere without strong execution. The idea of satirizing the racism/sexism/solipsism of much Sword & Sorcery and "hard" SF by writing a book as if by Adolph Hitler is a good one, but instead of actually critiquing such fiction by demonstrating its links to fascist ideology, Spinrad gets carried away satirizing Nazism itself, an absurdly easy target. For example, rather than introducing a bunch of cardboard characters bearing the barely modified names of Nazi leaders, imagine if Spinrad had featured a Jubal Harshaw-like pontificator, an incomparable Dejah Thoris type, and a Sam Gamgee-style sympathetic sidekick. Instead, he winds up with satire that doesn't hit anyone where they live, which is pointless. Meanwhile, the book itself is poorly written, but not in a way that clearly calls to mind any successful SF or fantasy: if you read every page of this book (I confess to skimming through 2/3 of it) the joke's on you.
May 10, 2022
Το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο ήθελα πώς και πώς να κυκλοφορήσει στα ελληνικά (έχοντας διαβάσει έξι βιβλία του Νόρμαν Σπίνραντ), τον Απρίλιο του 2020 οι Εκδόσεις των Συναδέλφων έκαναν την ευχάριστη έκπληξη και το έφεραν στην Ελλάδα, εγώ το αγόρασα άμεσα, να όμως που έπρεπε να περάσουν κάτι παραπάνω από δυο χρόνια για να το διαβάσω. Λοιπόν, πρόκειται χαλαρά για ένα από τα πιο κουλά αλλά απολαυστικά βιβλία που διάβασα τα τελευταία χρόνια, μια ανελέητη σάτιρα γεμάτη μαύρο χιούμορ, η οποία σάτιρα όμως παίζει με την υπομονή του αναγνώστη, μιας και εδώ ο Νόρμαν Σπίνραντ γράφει ένα παθιασμένο αλλά μάλλον κακογραμμένο και πομπώδες παλπ μυθιστόρημα επιστημονικής φαντασίας, με το ψευδώνυμο Αδόλφος Χίτλερ. Ή μάλλον όχι! Ο Αδόλφος Χίτλερ γράφει ένα μυθιστόρημα επιστημονικής φαντασίας που απηχεί όλη την κοσμοθεωρία του και τις σκέψεις του για την ανθρωπότητα, μιας και μετανάστευσε στις ΗΠΑ λίγο μετά τον Α' Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο και έγινε καλλιτέχνης του δρόμου και περιστασιακός μεταφραστής στο Μποεμικό Γκρίνουιτς Βίλατζ της Νέας Υόρκης, πριν γίνει εικονογράφος σε περιοδικά και κόμικς και μετά συγγραφέας παλπ μυθιστορημάτων επιστημονικής φαντασίας (πέθανε το 1953). Χα, είναι φοβερό αυτό που έκανε ο Σπίνραντ, και σίγουρα πολύ έξυπνο και πνευματώδες. Βέβαια, κακά τα ψέματα, σχεδόν όλο το βιβλίο, εκτός από το εισαγωγικό σημείωμα και τον καταπληκτικό επίλογο κάποιου Ομήρου Γουίπλ που αναλύει το μυθιστόρημα του Αδόλφου Χίτλερ (και που παράλληλα δείχνει μια εναλλακτική πορεία της ιστορίας, αφού οι Ναζί δεν κατέλαβαν την εξουσία στη Γερμανία), είναι ένα βίαιο, αιματηρό και ακραίο μυθιστόρημα ενός σαλεμένου τύπου, γεμάτο επικές μάχες, παρελάσεις, προπαγανδιστικές εκδηλώσεις και πάει λέγοντας, με τις περιγραφές των μαχών αλλά και των εχθρών του πρωταγωνιστή (και της πατρίδας του, της Χελντονίας), να είναι πραγματικά αδιανόητες, όπως θα περίμενε κανείς από κάποιον σαν τον Αδόλφο Χίτλερ (που έγινε συγγραφέας της δεκάρας). Η αλήθεια είναι ότι θα μπορούσα να γράψω εδώ μερικά τέτοια σημεία για να σας δώσω να καταλάβετε τι εννοώ, αλλά το καλύτερο είναι απλώς να διαβάσετε το βιβλίο, και να δείτε πόσο έξυπνα ο Σπίνραντ σατιρίζει τον Αδόλφο Χίτλερ και τους Ναζί (και όχι μόνο...). Δεν μπορώ να του βάλω πέντε αστεράκια (σιγά μη βάλω πέντε αστεράκια σε βιβλίο που έγραψε ο Χίτλερ!), αλλά πραγματικά το απόλαυσα.
March 30, 2008
The Iron Dream is one of the true classics of science fiction. It is a core work in what I can only describe as a microgenre of sorts that appeared during the late 60's and early 70's -- Science Fiction as seriously black humor and revolutionary social commentary. The principle writers (that I can recall offhand -- I make no claim to this list being exhaustive) were Norman Spinrad and Harlan Ellison ( I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream, Dangerous Visions), but a number of other authors such as Larry Niven (especially his books on organlegging) or Fritz Leiber (e.g. A Spectre is Haunting Texas) contributed books or short stories that are arguably in the microgenre. Dangerous Visions (and Dangerous Visions II) collect a number of the short stories with the peculiar combination of sardonic darkness and flower power that arose out of the first generation of Vietnam war cynics who really took a hard look at our civilization.
The Iron Dream stands alone at the top -- over the top. It is a deeply, deeply disturbing science fiction novel that was supposedly "written" by Adolph Hitler. It is a post-holocaust story -- the big nuclear war of Damnation Alley or A Boy and His Dog has happened, and civilization has been reduced to a small group of white people who are undergoing a crisis as they are attacked by mutant hordes. A strong leader Feric Jaggar emerges and, surrounded by his jackbooted thugs, smashes his way to power in time to mobilize an army to save this tiny remnant of white civilization. Overcoming infiltration by mutant Semites and people of color with mind control powers, he creates an army that manages to utterly destroy the mutants at the cost of making the world too radioactive for stable sexual reproduction to work ever again.
Not to worry! Jaggar triumphs over even this, and guarantees that blond haired, blue eyed white people will maintain eternal mastery over not only this world but the stars themselves!
I think that many of the reviews of this story so far miss its fundamental point. It is intended to be pure "fun" for the sort of demented soul that can read it for the satire it is and not be offended by its "elevation" of a distortion of the real historical story of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to an insane wish-fulfillment fantasy of an Adolph Hitler who became a hack SF writer in an alternate reality. The book pokes fun at so many things -- pulp SF in general, post-holocaust pulp like Battlefield Earth (which is almost the same story except that L. Ron Hubbard takes himself seriously and the bad guys are space aliens and hence "safe" instead of mutant semisemitic hordes), Nazi Germany, racism, White America (which was alive and well and fighting "gooks" when this was written).
Its real point was to make you think (while entertaining you enormously). The reader comes away from the story both enlightened and annoyed. Spinrad makes you cheer for Jaggar in the narrow context of his fantasy even as you are repelled by the fact that you are cheering for a thinly veiled distortion for one of our most horrifying pieces of actual history. Thus he holds a dark mirror up to our souls, showing how there is a narrow line separating our legitimate wish not to be enslaved by mutant hordes in fantasy and the all-too common white-person fantasy in the real world that Jewish people, Black people, Oriental people, all are secretly mutant hordes that wish to enslave them so that the only defense is to enslave them first.
Spinrad (I will admit) is one of my all-time favorite SF authors. Some of his books are mediocre, or so strange a vision that it is difficult to hold onto the thread of plot through the distractions of drugs and galactic cultures he invents, the uber-hippy mentality of his future universes. Some of them are just plain awesome and make you think even as they skewer society on many levels. The Iron Dream is one of them.
( Bug Jack Barron is another, and I'll write a review of it one day as well...:-)
rgb
The Iron Dream stands alone at the top -- over the top. It is a deeply, deeply disturbing science fiction novel that was supposedly "written" by Adolph Hitler. It is a post-holocaust story -- the big nuclear war of Damnation Alley or A Boy and His Dog has happened, and civilization has been reduced to a small group of white people who are undergoing a crisis as they are attacked by mutant hordes. A strong leader Feric Jaggar emerges and, surrounded by his jackbooted thugs, smashes his way to power in time to mobilize an army to save this tiny remnant of white civilization. Overcoming infiltration by mutant Semites and people of color with mind control powers, he creates an army that manages to utterly destroy the mutants at the cost of making the world too radioactive for stable sexual reproduction to work ever again.
Not to worry! Jaggar triumphs over even this, and guarantees that blond haired, blue eyed white people will maintain eternal mastery over not only this world but the stars themselves!
I think that many of the reviews of this story so far miss its fundamental point. It is intended to be pure "fun" for the sort of demented soul that can read it for the satire it is and not be offended by its "elevation" of a distortion of the real historical story of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to an insane wish-fulfillment fantasy of an Adolph Hitler who became a hack SF writer in an alternate reality. The book pokes fun at so many things -- pulp SF in general, post-holocaust pulp like Battlefield Earth (which is almost the same story except that L. Ron Hubbard takes himself seriously and the bad guys are space aliens and hence "safe" instead of mutant semisemitic hordes), Nazi Germany, racism, White America (which was alive and well and fighting "gooks" when this was written).
Its real point was to make you think (while entertaining you enormously). The reader comes away from the story both enlightened and annoyed. Spinrad makes you cheer for Jaggar in the narrow context of his fantasy even as you are repelled by the fact that you are cheering for a thinly veiled distortion for one of our most horrifying pieces of actual history. Thus he holds a dark mirror up to our souls, showing how there is a narrow line separating our legitimate wish not to be enslaved by mutant hordes in fantasy and the all-too common white-person fantasy in the real world that Jewish people, Black people, Oriental people, all are secretly mutant hordes that wish to enslave them so that the only defense is to enslave them first.
Spinrad (I will admit) is one of my all-time favorite SF authors. Some of his books are mediocre, or so strange a vision that it is difficult to hold onto the thread of plot through the distractions of drugs and galactic cultures he invents, the uber-hippy mentality of his future universes. Some of them are just plain awesome and make you think even as they skewer society on many levels. The Iron Dream is one of them.
( Bug Jack Barron is another, and I'll write a review of it one day as well...:-)
rgb
July 15, 2021
The Iron Dream is something of an an over-looked classic of science fiction, full of biting and burning satire. In short, it's Lord of the Swastika, the book that Adolf Hitler would have written if he had emigrated to the U.S. in 1919 and become a hack science fiction writer. There's a brief About the Author page along with a list of Hitler's other novels, including such gems as Emperor of the Asteroids, The Master Race, and Tomorrow the World. It's not a well-written book, compared to what one expects Spinrad to sound like, because he did such a good job of adapting Hitler's voice, but the satire is on every page, lampooning every subject, and there's something here to offend everyone. Lots to wince, chuckle, and grimace at.
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January 24, 2025What if Hitler decided to write Mein Kampf as a science-fantasy novel and never rose to power in Germany? Welcome to the world of The Iron Dream. After Adolf Hitler "dabbled briefly in radical politics", he moved to New York in 1919 where he became a beloved science-fiction illustrator and author. Now we get to read his best-selling novel, Lord of the Swastika, where the heroic Feric Jagger will save the Herland and its posterity from the mutants, mongrels, and Dominators who threaten the true human genotype with their genetic impurity. Most of The Iron Dream is spent reading the meta-fictional Lord of the Swastika novel and it is awful. Its full of racism, over the top gore, hyper-masculinity, obsessive military pageantry, phallic imagery, repetitive prose and so many more problems. However, after Lord of the Swastika ends, we get a meta-fictional book review of Lord of the Swastika from a fictional literary critic which makes the satire of The Iron Dream explicit. It talks about all these problems with the book and how the author (the fictional Adolf Hitler) must have been a neurotic and possibly psychotic individual to have written it. This 10-page literary criticism also speculates on how such an awful novel could become popular by playing on the baser emotions of the masses which is, in essence, a commentary on how Nazism may have been so easily adopted in our real world. Incredible. The Iron Dream works you on so many levels: Spinrad had the self-awareness to write an entire horrible novel within a novel and then rip it to shreds as his own critic while also developing a fictional world in which his fictional literary critic lives. This book is meta-fictional, satirical genius.
July 18, 2019
Wow, was this book disappointing. When I found out that someone had written a novel based on Adolf Hitler moving to New York City after World War 1 and becoming a science fiction writer and illustrator instead of becoming a genocidal dictator, I was intrigued and couldn't wait to get my hands on said book. The final product, however, was far less interesting than what I had anticipated. Forcing myself to read every single page was torture.
Spinrad made sure to make the writing style as monotonous, long-winded, and bloated as the actual Adolf Hitler's notoriously terrible "Mein Kampf," which I guess Spinrad should win points for? I'm not really sure. Should I appreciate that Spinrad took pains to make his novel seem as if Hitler actually wrote it, even though Hitler was an awful writer? Am I allowed to be annoyed that Spinrad's Hitler's novel, although obviously meant to be a political satire on the real-life Adolf Hitler, is unrealistic in the sense that this fictional Hitler would never have written a novel with a plot that so closely resembles real life Hitler's real life in World War 2? Can I be irritated by the repeated use of, "This was followed by over a minute of spontaneous cheering," throughout the novel?
Spinrad attempted to make this book resemble typical 1950s pulp-fiction sci-fi fare, and did a pretty good job at that. The allegory forced you to think (well, only a little) about what Feric Haggar's enemies in the novel represented in real life. Additionally, as an artifact of political satire, it is a very successful book, especially as a thought experiment. However, as a REAL book (you know, one that you read for enjoyment?) it certainly falls short for me.
Spinrad made sure to make the writing style as monotonous, long-winded, and bloated as the actual Adolf Hitler's notoriously terrible "Mein Kampf," which I guess Spinrad should win points for? I'm not really sure. Should I appreciate that Spinrad took pains to make his novel seem as if Hitler actually wrote it, even though Hitler was an awful writer? Am I allowed to be annoyed that Spinrad's Hitler's novel, although obviously meant to be a political satire on the real-life Adolf Hitler, is unrealistic in the sense that this fictional Hitler would never have written a novel with a plot that so closely resembles real life Hitler's real life in World War 2? Can I be irritated by the repeated use of, "This was followed by over a minute of spontaneous cheering," throughout the novel?
Spinrad attempted to make this book resemble typical 1950s pulp-fiction sci-fi fare, and did a pretty good job at that. The allegory forced you to think (well, only a little) about what Feric Haggar's enemies in the novel represented in real life. Additionally, as an artifact of political satire, it is a very successful book, especially as a thought experiment. However, as a REAL book (you know, one that you read for enjoyment?) it certainly falls short for me.
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December 5, 2017Abgebrochen auf Seite 126
October 31, 2022
¨El Sueño de …¨ Norman Spinrad.
(O ESE hombre de la Swástica)
Entre los libros de historia alternativa, hay uno que va más allá de todo género, empujando algunos sentidos hasta un límite tan poco explorado que resulta difícil nombrar. Norman Spinrad nos propone un presente (de los años 1970´) en el que Hitler emigró a Estados Unidos en 1919, después del fallido Pusch de la Cervecería, y se ganó la vida como dibujante, ilustrador y finalmente escritor de ciencia ficción.
Lo radicalmente genial es que ¨El Sueño de Hierro¨ no es la biografía de ¨ESE¨ Hitler, sino una de las novelas que ¨ESE¨ Hitler hubiese escrito. El libro que uno tiene en la mano cuando lee esta obra es en si mismo un fragmento de esa realidad, un ejemplo sublime de la creación de cosas con palabras. Y, a la vez, una crítica a las novelas de Ciencia Ficción y Fantasía, que pone en evidencia el racismo implícito en las historias típicas del género.
La prosa en si misma, como es de esperarse, bizarra y caricaturesca, tiene cierto aire de mala actuación. Spinrad escribe haciéndose el Hitler, como Chaplín ejecuta el ¨Gran Dictador¨, uno no deja de ver a Chaplín haciendo lo mejor que sabe hacer. Pero sería injusto pretender mas porque, por un lado, ya es suficiente despliegue y despilfarro de ¨Witz¨ puro, y por otro lado, ¨ESE¨ Hitler no es un Heterónimo y Spinrad no es Pessoa.
Asimismo (y esto tampoco es novedad) ¨El Sueño de Hierro¨ es una superposición salvajemente ejecutada de la biografía de ¨ESTE¨ Hitler y sus (supuestos) sueños de grandeza. Fantasía de la fantasía, anuda tres Hitlers para dirigirse a un lector que difícilmente pueda ser un mero turista literario. El ¨Führer¨ que fue y el que quiso ser, cifrados por el Hitler que pudo haber sido. El narrador (omnisciente, tercera persona) del cuento, sin ser un personaje él mismo, es el protagonista principal, y el lector se ve atrapado y reflejado en un texto que responde a todos los clichés genéricos del ¨Pulp¨ pochoclero. ¿Cuántas veces hemos asistido, en la gran pantalla, a la aniquilación de una raza de infrahumanos regenteados por criaturas arteras y ventajistas? ¿A cuántos ejércitos de Zombies desposeidos y descerebrados hemos visto masacrar acorde a derecho? ¿Cuántas veces lo leímos en los libros de historia? ¿Cuántas veces lo hemos visto en los resúmenes de las noticias? ¿Cuántos monstruos vividores activos, lacras abúlicas, parásitos inteligentes, indeseables y desamparados querríamos borrar de la faz de la historia por piedad?.
Spinrad nos lo enrostra en perspectiva, con un collage de Historia y fantasía, siete años antes de ¨The Wall¨, ¨El Señor de la Swastika¨ ya nos invitaba a ponernos el uniforme y unirnos a su cruzada que es también nuestra cruzada porque ¨ESE¨ Hitler refleja a ¨ESTE¨ Hitler, que se atrevió a dar unos cuantos pasos en ¨ESA¨ dirección en la que todos nos gustaría avanzar, lo sepamos o no. ¿Cuántas veces soñamos con hacer estallar todo y construir un mundo mejor?. Spinrad no es Burguess, y ¨Feric Jaggar¨ tiene más de nosotros que ¨Alex¨, aunque los poderes que moldean el mundo de ¨La Naranja Mecánica¨ nos parezcan más conocidos que los de ¨El Sueño de Hierro¨. La explicación es simple, todos somos ¨Alex¨ y vivimos como Naranjas Mecánicas, pero queremos ser ¨Feric¨ y vivir ¨Heldon¨.
Así, la parodia fantástica de la novela del género fantástico cuestiona las versiones oficiales de la historia, en las que hay ¨Buenos¨ y ¨Malos¨, con intereses contrapuestos, y cosmovisiones radicalmente diferentes. El narrador omnisciente, cuestiona (y parodia) al dueño de la verdad que redactó los libros de texto de los colegios. El héroe mesiánico pone en cuestión (parodiando) a todos los héroes y todas las promesas, y al realizarse deviene Anticristo enarbolando la bandera de una religión de actos y satisfacciones colectivas, del derecho, bien absoluto, abnegado e innegable. Ya no caben la oración, ni la esperanza, sólo la sumisión de todos y cada uno, al deseo de todos y cada uno. Lo que queremos y lo que nos imponen coincide a sangre y fuego, y palabras.
Controversial desde el primer día, ¨El Sue��o de Hierro¨ fue aprobado y desaprobado, simultánea y sucesivamente, tanto por los simpatizantes como por los detractores. Prohibido en Alemania, incluido en la lista del Partido NAZI Estadounidense de lecturas sugeridas, ganador de un Nébula y un Hugo, recomendado e ignorado para recibir el premio de ¨Libro del Año¨ en 1973, aplaudido y denostado (muchas veces por los mismos motivos), las opiniones trazan todas las lecturas y todos los gustos posibles. Y la voz del mismo Norman Spinrad parece haber caído en oídos sordos, para regocijo de todos, porque Spinrad no es ¨ESE¨ Hitler que se escapó de sus manos y todavía tiene algo para decir.
(O ESE hombre de la Swástica)
Entre los libros de historia alternativa, hay uno que va más allá de todo género, empujando algunos sentidos hasta un límite tan poco explorado que resulta difícil nombrar. Norman Spinrad nos propone un presente (de los años 1970´) en el que Hitler emigró a Estados Unidos en 1919, después del fallido Pusch de la Cervecería, y se ganó la vida como dibujante, ilustrador y finalmente escritor de ciencia ficción.
Lo radicalmente genial es que ¨El Sueño de Hierro¨ no es la biografía de ¨ESE¨ Hitler, sino una de las novelas que ¨ESE¨ Hitler hubiese escrito. El libro que uno tiene en la mano cuando lee esta obra es en si mismo un fragmento de esa realidad, un ejemplo sublime de la creación de cosas con palabras. Y, a la vez, una crítica a las novelas de Ciencia Ficción y Fantasía, que pone en evidencia el racismo implícito en las historias típicas del género.
La prosa en si misma, como es de esperarse, bizarra y caricaturesca, tiene cierto aire de mala actuación. Spinrad escribe haciéndose el Hitler, como Chaplín ejecuta el ¨Gran Dictador¨, uno no deja de ver a Chaplín haciendo lo mejor que sabe hacer. Pero sería injusto pretender mas porque, por un lado, ya es suficiente despliegue y despilfarro de ¨Witz¨ puro, y por otro lado, ¨ESE¨ Hitler no es un Heterónimo y Spinrad no es Pessoa.
Asimismo (y esto tampoco es novedad) ¨El Sueño de Hierro¨ es una superposición salvajemente ejecutada de la biografía de ¨ESTE¨ Hitler y sus (supuestos) sueños de grandeza. Fantasía de la fantasía, anuda tres Hitlers para dirigirse a un lector que difícilmente pueda ser un mero turista literario. El ¨Führer¨ que fue y el que quiso ser, cifrados por el Hitler que pudo haber sido. El narrador (omnisciente, tercera persona) del cuento, sin ser un personaje él mismo, es el protagonista principal, y el lector se ve atrapado y reflejado en un texto que responde a todos los clichés genéricos del ¨Pulp¨ pochoclero. ¿Cuántas veces hemos asistido, en la gran pantalla, a la aniquilación de una raza de infrahumanos regenteados por criaturas arteras y ventajistas? ¿A cuántos ejércitos de Zombies desposeidos y descerebrados hemos visto masacrar acorde a derecho? ¿Cuántas veces lo leímos en los libros de historia? ¿Cuántas veces lo hemos visto en los resúmenes de las noticias? ¿Cuántos monstruos vividores activos, lacras abúlicas, parásitos inteligentes, indeseables y desamparados querríamos borrar de la faz de la historia por piedad?.
Spinrad nos lo enrostra en perspectiva, con un collage de Historia y fantasía, siete años antes de ¨The Wall¨, ¨El Señor de la Swastika¨ ya nos invitaba a ponernos el uniforme y unirnos a su cruzada que es también nuestra cruzada porque ¨ESE¨ Hitler refleja a ¨ESTE¨ Hitler, que se atrevió a dar unos cuantos pasos en ¨ESA¨ dirección en la que todos nos gustaría avanzar, lo sepamos o no. ¿Cuántas veces soñamos con hacer estallar todo y construir un mundo mejor?. Spinrad no es Burguess, y ¨Feric Jaggar¨ tiene más de nosotros que ¨Alex¨, aunque los poderes que moldean el mundo de ¨La Naranja Mecánica¨ nos parezcan más conocidos que los de ¨El Sueño de Hierro¨. La explicación es simple, todos somos ¨Alex¨ y vivimos como Naranjas Mecánicas, pero queremos ser ¨Feric¨ y vivir ¨Heldon¨.
Así, la parodia fantástica de la novela del género fantástico cuestiona las versiones oficiales de la historia, en las que hay ¨Buenos¨ y ¨Malos¨, con intereses contrapuestos, y cosmovisiones radicalmente diferentes. El narrador omnisciente, cuestiona (y parodia) al dueño de la verdad que redactó los libros de texto de los colegios. El héroe mesiánico pone en cuestión (parodiando) a todos los héroes y todas las promesas, y al realizarse deviene Anticristo enarbolando la bandera de una religión de actos y satisfacciones colectivas, del derecho, bien absoluto, abnegado e innegable. Ya no caben la oración, ni la esperanza, sólo la sumisión de todos y cada uno, al deseo de todos y cada uno. Lo que queremos y lo que nos imponen coincide a sangre y fuego, y palabras.
Controversial desde el primer día, ¨El Sue��o de Hierro¨ fue aprobado y desaprobado, simultánea y sucesivamente, tanto por los simpatizantes como por los detractores. Prohibido en Alemania, incluido en la lista del Partido NAZI Estadounidense de lecturas sugeridas, ganador de un Nébula y un Hugo, recomendado e ignorado para recibir el premio de ¨Libro del Año¨ en 1973, aplaudido y denostado (muchas veces por los mismos motivos), las opiniones trazan todas las lecturas y todos los gustos posibles. Y la voz del mismo Norman Spinrad parece haber caído en oídos sordos, para regocijo de todos, porque Spinrad no es ¨ESE¨ Hitler que se escapó de sus manos y todavía tiene algo para decir.
December 5, 2017
Abbruch nach 109 Seiten, Review evtl. später.
November 1, 2021
I was hoping to like this book more than I did.
Due to use of the words parody and satire in blurbs, I thought it would be amusing, like a Saturday Night Live skit or wicked and amusing like some episodes of South Park. But I did not find it humorous at all.
IMO more work with the frame would have been better -- like The Princess Bride when the grown son keeps hunting for the old book that his grandfather read to him. (If you read later editions of The Princess Bride, like 30th anniversary or movie tie-ins, he adds even more framework around the original frame, and with the layers it becomes even funnier.) Interjections sometimes about how Mr. Hitler the author was going for this or that?
Memories: chrome, red, black, flags with swastikas, chrome, The Great Truncheon, shooting up mutant aliens with lots of ichor coming out of their legs. Chrome.
If I judge it only as a story, the story itself I did not find that interesting... I thought wistfully of other books with conflict between multiple small nations on one planet, like Treason or the Well World series: entertaining!
Read because:
1. monthly pick for Hugo & Nebula Best Novels group;
2. back catalog/bookshelf for my IRL SF book club.
P.S.: I forgot to say what the book is about:
In an alternate history, Adolf Hitler, instead of going into German politics in the 1920s, moves to America and becomes a science fiction writer. Most of this consists of a book-within-a-book that Hitler wrote. Lord of the Swastika is his SF action tale a thousand+ years after a nuclear disaster that caused genetic mutations in most people. Protagonist Jagger takes leadership of the nation of Helden aiming to rid the world of mutants. Cue Nazi wet dream!
This review gives better descriptions than mine!:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Due to use of the words parody and satire in blurbs, I thought it would be amusing, like a Saturday Night Live skit or wicked and amusing like some episodes of South Park. But I did not find it humorous at all.
IMO more work with the frame would have been better -- like The Princess Bride when the grown son keeps hunting for the old book that his grandfather read to him. (If you read later editions of The Princess Bride, like 30th anniversary or movie tie-ins, he adds even more framework around the original frame, and with the layers it becomes even funnier.) Interjections sometimes about how Mr. Hitler the author was going for this or that?
Memories: chrome, red, black, flags with swastikas, chrome, The Great Truncheon, shooting up mutant aliens with lots of ichor coming out of their legs. Chrome.
If I judge it only as a story, the story itself I did not find that interesting... I thought wistfully of other books with conflict between multiple small nations on one planet, like Treason or the Well World series: entertaining!
Read because:
1. monthly pick for Hugo & Nebula Best Novels group;
2. back catalog/bookshelf for my IRL SF book club.
P.S.: I forgot to say what the book is about:
In an alternate history, Adolf Hitler, instead of going into German politics in the 1920s, moves to America and becomes a science fiction writer. Most of this consists of a book-within-a-book that Hitler wrote. Lord of the Swastika is his SF action tale a thousand+ years after a nuclear disaster that caused genetic mutations in most people. Protagonist Jagger takes leadership of the nation of Helden aiming to rid the world of mutants. Cue Nazi wet dream!
This review gives better descriptions than mine!:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
December 27, 2008
Rating this book in terms of "one to five stars" is a complicated proposition. Are you rating the entire package or the book-within-a-book, Lord Of The Swastika, by Adolf Hitler?
On its own, Lord Of The Swastika is fairly wretched stuff: formulaic, over-enthusiastic pulp tripe.
But packaged as a product of an alternate history, it becomes powerful. It's the study of an embittered politician and possibly a latent homosexual, and a statement about mythic heroes as they apply to history. With the shadow of the Holocaust and World War Two looming behind it, this pulp tripe becomes unsettling.
In the alternate history, Lord Of The Swastika is light entertainment and has a strong and enthusiastic fan base. If we take a similarly-enjoyed fictional work from our work and perform the reverse of Spinrad's transformation, what kind of disturbing world would be produced?
On its own, Lord Of The Swastika is fairly wretched stuff: formulaic, over-enthusiastic pulp tripe.
But packaged as a product of an alternate history, it becomes powerful. It's the study of an embittered politician and possibly a latent homosexual, and a statement about mythic heroes as they apply to history. With the shadow of the Holocaust and World War Two looming behind it, this pulp tripe becomes unsettling.
In the alternate history, Lord Of The Swastika is light entertainment and has a strong and enthusiastic fan base. If we take a similarly-enjoyed fictional work from our work and perform the reverse of Spinrad's transformation, what kind of disturbing world would be produced?
December 28, 2015
-Concepto original en la aproximación a lo monstruoso que se puede esconder entre lo intrascendente.-
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Edición que contiene la novela “El señor de la svástica”, premio Hugo en 1954 con carácter póstumo para el escritor e ilustrador Adolf Hitler, de origen alemán pero afincado en los Estados Unidos de América desde 1919, que nos narra la historia del héroe Feric Jaggar que, con su fe en un futuro mejor y con su pureza racial de hombre verdadero, se enfrenta a mutantes y doms que empañan la genética de la bella sociedad de Heldon, primero, y después del mundo, pero además una pequeña introducción sobre el autor y, al final, un comentario sobre la segunda edición de la obra escrito por un experto de la Universidad de Nueva York.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Edición que contiene la novela “El señor de la svástica”, premio Hugo en 1954 con carácter póstumo para el escritor e ilustrador Adolf Hitler, de origen alemán pero afincado en los Estados Unidos de América desde 1919, que nos narra la historia del héroe Feric Jaggar que, con su fe en un futuro mejor y con su pureza racial de hombre verdadero, se enfrenta a mutantes y doms que empañan la genética de la bella sociedad de Heldon, primero, y después del mundo, pero además una pequeña introducción sobre el autor y, al final, un comentario sobre la segunda edición de la obra escrito por un experto de la Universidad de Nueva York.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....
June 5, 2008
An alternate history where Hitler immigrated to America and became a pulp fiction writer.
February 2, 2021
This book is a science fiction novel called Lord of the Swastika "authored" by Adolf Hitler in an alternate timeline where he is driven out of Germany before the Nazis amount to anything and flees to America where he serves as first illustrator then writer.
There: now you know everything you should really want to know about this book. It's a high-concept work of literature that aims to stick a dagger in the heart of golden-age scifi by pointing a finger at its illiberal elements and how easily they can be adapted in the service of genocidal Nazi maniacs. The basic argument of the book is that the tropes of golden-age scifi emphasize exceptional individuals, organizations, and ethnic stereotypes in a way that we would recognize as bad if we weren't distracted by all the pretty lasers and rocket ships.
The problem is, and bear with me here, Adolf Hitler is not a fun guy to read. Who knew, right? As a concept this book sounds brilliant. I heard the idea and laughed (just look at some of the book covers!) and added it to my must-read list. But the problem is that a successful novel has to be more than just a good idea. It has to provide some value from reading it. You have to feel some sort of desire to finish it and not, say, hurl it across the room in disgust and contempt. But revulsion is exactly the emotion stirred up here. Hitler's Übermensch hero Feric is absolutely as vile as his creator. He's the ultimate Mary Sue - pure of heart, selfless, all-powerful, a living embodiment of sheer will unbound by convention or morality - and because this is Hitler all this is a result of his racial superiority over his inferiors. His goal is to purge the human race of all the impure radioactive mutants (scum) who infest the genepool.
Because all this is so extreme and unlikable Spinrad rather undermines his own point. I could not see this ever being published and certainly not winning the Hugo. It is vile. A putrescent waste of ink and brain cells. I can recall plenty of unpleasantness from golden-age scifi (sexism, racism, imperialism...) but nothing that even vaguely recalls this sort of genocidal fury. This is not how you make the point that golden-age scifi had regressive elements. You want to make people really think? Give them something to enjoy and then pull the rug out from under them. Like Starship Troopers (the film not the book) did. Overwhelm with the cool, with the rockets and laser ships, and only slowly reveal the malice underneath. Otherwise you're just writing a bitter and ultimately meaningless and mean-spirited parody.
Inasmuch as I do gain anything from it it's a recognition of how easy Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces can be adapted to any circumstance. Any similarities between golden-age scifi and this novel come about because they're both borrowing from this monomyth. But it doesn't mean anything that he can do this. I could honestly do the same thing with any genre that he does to this one. Romance? Make it about an evil man trying to force a woman into miscegenation. Comedy? Turn the Jews into laughable caricatures. Action/Adventure? Make it about a vast Zionist Conspiracy to take over the world and a heroic German's attempt to stop it. If you look, you can actually find examples of these from Nazi studios. They're not very good, but then neither is this book. The Nazis were not a very good group of people.
Basically what it amounts to is that this book is less intelligent than it thinks. And that becomes really obvious once we get to the latter stages of the book and the historical analogue starts to become even more on-the-nose. Remember: the premise of the book is that Hitler fled Germany in the early '20s before he could even take over the Nazi Party. So how can he predict the Night of the Long Knives? Or the thinly-disguised Röhm, Göring, and Goebbels analogues? If this is his fantasy why do they show up at all? Shouldn’t a satire of scifi novels have characters that reflect that genre's heroes rather than Nazis we already hate? This derails the book's purpose and turns it from satirizing bad scifi to satirizing Nazis. And what's the point of that? Most people already loathe them and Nazis themselves are immune to parody.
The frustrating thing is that the approach here could have worked so much better if he'd made just a few changes. The novel is bookended by an English professor's commentary on the story which provides most of the background details and pointed criticisms Spindrad's trying to make throughout the book. Many of these are amusing, at least to those with inside knowledge. For example, he points out that the pathological hatred Hitler evinces for the Dominators (mind-controlling mutants corrupting the purer race on behalf of the evil Zind) clearly represents his hatred for some real people but he can't figure out who. It can't be the Jews, he opines, because they were not Soviet sleeper agents and were in fact badly persecuted by them after they took over Germany (incidentally, the idea that Hitler was all that saved the world from a Communist takeover is unnecessary and gross). Continuing to be driven by blind and irrational fury even after it ceases to make any sense is such a Hitler thing to do. This sort of inside joke-laden storytelling is exactly what the book needs to make the horror bearable and it should really have been distributed as footnotes throughout the book. As it stands you're just hovering on the abyss. And why bother when there's not an important reason to be there?
This book was a great high-concept idea that probably could never have worked. If it had, it could only be as a short story so that we don't have to endure the turgid prose and god-awful subject matter. Spinrad is very good at aping the paroxyms of rage and scatological obsessions that dominate Hitler's writing. But his contempt for the subject of his satire (which is supposed to be science fiction not Nazis) led to him losing track of his own plot. If a book is neither enjoyable nor particularly insightful then what's the point?
There: now you know everything you should really want to know about this book. It's a high-concept work of literature that aims to stick a dagger in the heart of golden-age scifi by pointing a finger at its illiberal elements and how easily they can be adapted in the service of genocidal Nazi maniacs. The basic argument of the book is that the tropes of golden-age scifi emphasize exceptional individuals, organizations, and ethnic stereotypes in a way that we would recognize as bad if we weren't distracted by all the pretty lasers and rocket ships.
The problem is, and bear with me here, Adolf Hitler is not a fun guy to read. Who knew, right? As a concept this book sounds brilliant. I heard the idea and laughed (just look at some of the book covers!) and added it to my must-read list. But the problem is that a successful novel has to be more than just a good idea. It has to provide some value from reading it. You have to feel some sort of desire to finish it and not, say, hurl it across the room in disgust and contempt. But revulsion is exactly the emotion stirred up here. Hitler's Übermensch hero Feric is absolutely as vile as his creator. He's the ultimate Mary Sue - pure of heart, selfless, all-powerful, a living embodiment of sheer will unbound by convention or morality - and because this is Hitler all this is a result of his racial superiority over his inferiors. His goal is to purge the human race of all the impure radioactive mutants (scum) who infest the genepool.
Because all this is so extreme and unlikable Spinrad rather undermines his own point. I could not see this ever being published and certainly not winning the Hugo. It is vile. A putrescent waste of ink and brain cells. I can recall plenty of unpleasantness from golden-age scifi (sexism, racism, imperialism...) but nothing that even vaguely recalls this sort of genocidal fury. This is not how you make the point that golden-age scifi had regressive elements. You want to make people really think? Give them something to enjoy and then pull the rug out from under them. Like Starship Troopers (the film not the book) did. Overwhelm with the cool, with the rockets and laser ships, and only slowly reveal the malice underneath. Otherwise you're just writing a bitter and ultimately meaningless and mean-spirited parody.
Inasmuch as I do gain anything from it it's a recognition of how easy Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces can be adapted to any circumstance. Any similarities between golden-age scifi and this novel come about because they're both borrowing from this monomyth. But it doesn't mean anything that he can do this. I could honestly do the same thing with any genre that he does to this one. Romance? Make it about an evil man trying to force a woman into miscegenation. Comedy? Turn the Jews into laughable caricatures. Action/Adventure? Make it about a vast Zionist Conspiracy to take over the world and a heroic German's attempt to stop it. If you look, you can actually find examples of these from Nazi studios. They're not very good, but then neither is this book. The Nazis were not a very good group of people.
Basically what it amounts to is that this book is less intelligent than it thinks. And that becomes really obvious once we get to the latter stages of the book and the historical analogue starts to become even more on-the-nose. Remember: the premise of the book is that Hitler fled Germany in the early '20s before he could even take over the Nazi Party. So how can he predict the Night of the Long Knives? Or the thinly-disguised Röhm, Göring, and Goebbels analogues? If this is his fantasy why do they show up at all? Shouldn’t a satire of scifi novels have characters that reflect that genre's heroes rather than Nazis we already hate? This derails the book's purpose and turns it from satirizing bad scifi to satirizing Nazis. And what's the point of that? Most people already loathe them and Nazis themselves are immune to parody.
The frustrating thing is that the approach here could have worked so much better if he'd made just a few changes. The novel is bookended by an English professor's commentary on the story which provides most of the background details and pointed criticisms Spindrad's trying to make throughout the book. Many of these are amusing, at least to those with inside knowledge. For example, he points out that the pathological hatred Hitler evinces for the Dominators (mind-controlling mutants corrupting the purer race on behalf of the evil Zind) clearly represents his hatred for some real people but he can't figure out who. It can't be the Jews, he opines, because they were not Soviet sleeper agents and were in fact badly persecuted by them after they took over Germany (incidentally, the idea that Hitler was all that saved the world from a Communist takeover is unnecessary and gross). Continuing to be driven by blind and irrational fury even after it ceases to make any sense is such a Hitler thing to do. This sort of inside joke-laden storytelling is exactly what the book needs to make the horror bearable and it should really have been distributed as footnotes throughout the book. As it stands you're just hovering on the abyss. And why bother when there's not an important reason to be there?
This book was a great high-concept idea that probably could never have worked. If it had, it could only be as a short story so that we don't have to endure the turgid prose and god-awful subject matter. Spinrad is very good at aping the paroxyms of rage and scatological obsessions that dominate Hitler's writing. But his contempt for the subject of his satire (which is supposed to be science fiction not Nazis) led to him losing track of his own plot. If a book is neither enjoyable nor particularly insightful then what's the point?
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