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5.0 out of 5 stars
A bad book thats really quite good, Nov 6 2001
By A Customer
The beauty of the Iron Dream is that Spinrad does take his reader's intelligence for granted. That the actual "book" is horribly written and plotted is the point; the author of this book is suppose to be a pulp writer, and this is what and how a pulp writer writes. But don't be fooled, that it is poorly written makes one laugh and in laughing we find it non-threatening, but it is dangerous to think that something stupid is harmless. Most people think that what happened in Nazi Germany was an aberration, something that a supposedly "civilized" or "humane" society would never do. It was the Teutonic strain in German makeup that turned them into Nazis, not something that resides in each and every one of us. Spinrad knows better, he knows that there are emotional buttons that can be pushed that will get you to accept the most hideous delusions, that it is the stupid things that fly in under our intellectual radar. When you read the book you find yourself rooting for Feric Jaggar; even though you know that this is a metaphor for Hitler. You find yourself caught up in the read, and while you are laughing at the outrageous imagery and the purple prose, you unconsciously begin to accept the premise that the bloated, slimy mutants in the book are evil and what Jaggar is doing is right. And this is why I said Spinrad takes our intelligence for granted. He knows that you think you know what he is trying to do, but it isn't until you read the final section, the deconstruction piece, that you realize that he fooled you. We are not as clever as we thought; we can be fooled into accepting a truly scary vision through excitement and rich visualizations. We respond as instinctively as the Germans did to the "Triumph of Will." Many of the books we cherish; are they not only better written fantasy versions of what Hitler accomplished in reality. Books like the Lord of the Rings (where the noble, brave, strong, good fair-haired tall humans of the Northeast (Europe) defeat the dark, weak, evil Orcs and sub-humans from the South (Africa and Arabia) and the East (the Orient)), the Foundation Series (where technocrats predetermine how history should proceed because it is not individuals that are important, but the large impersonal forces of nature that are in charge of our collective fate), or any one of a thousands books (both pulp and not) written between the 1920's through the early 1960's; they all propose ideas that if we thought about we would find disgusting, but then that's the point. We don't think, we just read and accept, as long as it's entertaining and supports our preconceived notions, and before we know it, it's too late. It's not often that a book can get you to think, not about what was written, but how it was written; this book is a rare example.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely Imaginative, Jul 21 2001
What would have happened if Hitler left Germany, came to the states, and wrote sci fi? The question will sound absurd, but only until you read this novel. Many people describe Iron Dream as satire, but I think it is far deeper for such a term. Rather, Spinrad forces the reader to imagine the world in the way Hitler saw it and then makes you hope his side wins (in this book they are the good guys). As an intellectual exercise, reading this novel is both exciting and perverse but well worth the read.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A half-amusing/half-repulsive satire, Feb 22 2001
Which I think is exactly what Spinrad intended. If I remember correctly, this novel was for many years banned in Germany, and for all I know, still may be. Set in an alternate universe, in which Hitler emigrated to the U.S. and became a horribly bad hack science-fiction writer, this novel is truly strange. It's satirical and amusing, yet it's also repulsive, with the weird, oozy phallic imagery, the gleeful genocide, and its purposely banal style. I've only read it once, and I'm glad I did. I'm not sure I can read it again. It's just too disturbing.
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