The Iron Dream

Spinrad, Norman. The Iron Dream. New York: Timescape-Pocket, 1972. (Pocket Books is a division of Simon, a subsidiary of Gulf & Western).

Satire. The book contains "Lord of the Swastika / a science-fiction novel by Adolf Hitler" and the apparatus appropriate to such a novel in an alternative universe in which Hitler emigrated to New York in 1919. Lord of the Swastika is highly relevant as "a piece of sublimated pornography, a phallic orgy from beginning to end," with blantantly symbolic machines ranging from motorcycles to a seedship rocket to spread the Master Race to the stars (248, 244)—see J. Williamson's Manseed and the works crosslisted there. Note well the "Afterword to the Second Edition" by Homer Whipple: we quote Whipple on pornography, and NS has him make explicit (allowing for satiric hyperbole and intrinsic unfairness) the relationship between an imaginary Nazi S. F. novel and "the considerable body of pathological literature published within the science fiction field" in the real world (252).

RDE, Title, 7Aug19