Not really SF, more alternate universe Nazi thing. Well written, I think, but I didn't care for it much. ( )

Adolf Hitler leaves Germany a year after World War I, arrives in America, and dabbles in art and language before becoming an SF writer. Hitler’s last science fiction work, apparently, is "Lord of the Swastika," the story contained within the novel “The Iron Dream”.

In Hitler’s story “Lord of the Swastika”, a society that has rebuilt itself after a nuclear apocalypse, and now consists of two major groups – Trueman, or those that are pure humans, and a large variety of mutants. The main character of our story is Ferric Jaggar, a Trueman, who wishes to ensure the purity of the human race, which is best done by exterminating all mutants. Thwarting his plans are the mutants, who incessantly breed and dilute the human genepool, and the Dominators, a group of mutants that can control the minds of other mutants and even Trueman. It’s quite obvious that all of this references World War II – symbols phrases, saying, and the different groups in the book are thinly-veiled caricartures of real-world groups in World War II.

All of these blatant references are used by Norman Spinrad to point out how much early science fiction writer’s ideas of the future really matched Hitler’s ideal. Spinrad has an excellent point; I have encountered this attitude often enough reading older SF novels, that I appreciate the satire here.

The highlight of the book is definitely the critical analysis by fictional literary critic Homer Whipple, who provides a faux critical analysis of “Lord of the Swastika”. The analysis Whipple apparently provides manages to do several things to our interpretation of the story. The first is that the criticisms that Whipple levels at Hitler’s book are equally valid criticisms of many other SF books written in that era. The second is that the points that Whipple makes about the story also change our view of the story – Whipple draws our attention to phrases and statements within the book that might be taken at face value, and not analysed further had we not been aware of what was being satirised. The third point is that some short asides are made about the world that the book was apparently written, which change our interpretation of the book.

The book is best appreciated if you have sampled some of science fiction’s older works, so that you are aware of what Spinrad is satirising. (I presume that the vast majority of people have some knowledge of the course of World War II.) But if you have this experience, you will quite enjoy this satire. ( )

A mountain in the Great Plains of science fiction. ( )

A scathing attack on the style of SF that Spinrad describes as 'masturbatory power fantasy for the delectation of wimpish nerds', i.e. anything by Robert Heinlein. ( )

http://tpi-reads.blogspot.com/2008/09... ( )