(Uncredited cover for the 1972 edition)

4.75/5 (Very Good)

Nominated for the 1973 Nebula Award

Simply put, Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream (1972) is a fantastic alternate history novel.  However, unlike a standard “what if this happened instead and now let’s write a traditional narrative” alternate history, The Iron Dream is organized around a powerful metafictional conceit which explicitly serves to satirize pulp science fiction and fantasy and condemn its lurid nature and Spinrad would argue, racist inclinations.

The premise is straightforward: after the Great War (WWI) Hitler comes to the United States (and thus WWII never happens) and becomes a science fiction illustrator.  Eventually he starts writing science fiction and articles in fanzines.  However, he’s considered by the establishment to be little more than a hack writer and lives the rest of his life in squalor.  It is only after he dies (from symptoms related to syphilis) that he receives any critical success. What you read is Hitler’s 1954 posthumous Hugo-winning novel (which he wrote in six weeks), The Lord of the Swastika,  along with a short pseudo-scholarly “afterward to the Continue reading →