The Iron Drean
Norman Spinrad
Signet, 1979
ISBN: 0-451-09163-9
Whew. Okay, here’s one for you. What if after the first World War, stay with me, here. One little Adolf Hitler immigrated to the United States and used his meagre little talents to edge out a living as a pulp magazine illustrator and somewhere down the line an author? It certainly would be better for humanity right? Right? The American people wouldn’t fall for all of Hitler’s terrible rhetoric and ideas, right? Right? RIGHT?!
Norman Spinrad was one of those science fiction authors that liked to push the limits. I mean, obviously. He was an author who liked to poke at you, the reader, and test your limits. The Vietnam War cracked the US into pieces and the effects soaked into a lot of “popular fiction,” like sci-fi and horror. Spinrad was an author in this new wave of more socially conscious writers that were making tracks in the field. It wasn’t just space operas, lizard men and tales of robots anymore. Science Fiction was asking serious questions. This period went a long way to help “legitimize” hard sci-fi (as much as it ever will be) and Spinrad was a center figure, though fairly forgotten these days. He’s probably best remembered for this book and the novel Bug Jack Baron, both sharp satires of America and its quirks. He had a long career full of novels and short stories, a Hugo award for the Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine” and even wrote for Land of the Lost. That’s some range, people.
The Iron Dream is an entry of a personal paperback obsession of mine, aka “The Ones with Hitler in Them.” Blood Money by Jack Lewis, The Hate Genius by Kenneth Robeson and the big boy in the room, The Death of the Fuhrer by Roland Puccetti. There’s something INCREDIBLY SATISFYING about Hitler keeping his comeuppance at the hands of a paperback hero. Nothing beats killin’ Hitler. Now, The Iron Dream isn’t a rousing adventure tale about Hitler getting what was coming to him, but something far different.
Satire is hard. It’s hard to effectively write and it's usually fairly hard for a lot of people to understand. The Iron Dream is full-tilt satire of America, of “heroic pulp fiction” and those who fully buy into either. This is also an alternate history book, so what happened without Hitler in Germany? Well, the communists took over Germany, Russia took over great parts of the world and there was no real World War II. Russia pretty much became the big dog, globally speaking and the U.S. and Japan are in cahoots to ward off the greater threat of Russia. A good secession of the text is made up of “The Lord of the Swastika,” or Hitler’s best book.
This is the hard part, while this is an interesting (horrifically so) idea, having to read the book is a bit of a slog. “The Lord of the Swastika” is supposed to be a bad book, right? It can’t be good, you wouldn’t want to like a book by Hitler, at least I know I wouldn’t. But since most of The Iron Dream is made up of this sub-par heroic fantasy novel about Trueman and his fight against mutants (which is of course, thinly veiled about Hitler’s own evil ideas about humanity) that is simply, well, boring. The rest of the book is a review and textualization of the bad fantasy book by an academic which is the more interesting part, but it makes up so little of the novel that it can’t fully save it. Spinard was trying to make fun of pulp science fiction and make a little satire on the side. The prose is PURPLE, man. He did everything he could to try and get the reader in on the joke, but sadly I think so missed the point.
All in all it's a frustrating read. Too disjointed to be fully effective and probably frankly too far-out there to be taken seriously on any level. But the paperback editions over the years have produced some of the most wonderfully bonkers cover art, so that’s something.
My favorite part was when Hitler died of syphilis.
Roy Nugen is an award-winning writer, producer, property master, plus actor. He comes from a family of musicians, engineers, wildcatters, cops, lion tamers, and carpet salesmen. Evil Dead II changed his life and he once partied with Lloyd Kaufman.
He has written 15 short films including Bag Full of Trouble, Potboiler, Handle With Care, Death in Lavender, Hole in the Ground, and the feature film Arrive Alive, many of which have played across the country. He has been the property master on 17 short films and 2 feature films.
Roy is also a prolific book reviewer and collector of vintage pulp paperback books. You can read his reviews on his blog Bloody, Spicy Books and multiple magazines including Paperback Fanatic, Hot Lead and Sleazy Reader. He has also written afterwards for novels and for various websites. He lives in the only city that once arrested L. Ron Hubbard with his wife and cats.