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''[[The Iron Dream]]'' is a 1972 [[Heroic Fantasy]] / [[Science Fiction]] novel by Norman Spinrad... sort of. The majority of the book is the full text of the brilliantly popular fantasy novel ''Lord of the Swastika'', written by famed SF author [[Adolf Hitler]]; the rest of the book is a framing device setting up the world in which this alternate Hitler lives, and a concluding essay hammering the point home for those who didn't get it the first time through.
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Adolf Hitler]] -- His alternate-history version illustrated for [[Pulp Magazine|the pulps]], then moved on to writing cheesy fiction.
* [[After the End]] -- A nuclear apocalypse has tainted the human gene pool.
* [[Alternate History]] -- A world in which Hitler moved to the US, got involved in [[Science Fiction]] [[Fandom]], and died in 1954. Furthermore, Germany fell to a Communist revolution shortly after he left, and by the time of the book's "afterword" the Greater Soviet Union dominates Eurasia and Africa and is moving into South America, leaving only the United States and Japan as the bastions of freedom on the Pacific.
* [[
* [[Attack! Attack! Attack!]] -- The Dominators' [[Mooks]] are mind-controlled to keep on fighting even though the hero's forces are cutting them down by the score.
* [[Author Avatar]], [[Marty Stu]] -- Feric Jaggar is an obvious avatar of Hitler.
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** The [[Space Jews|Dominators']] country is called Zind, which could be meant to recall "Zion".
* [[Mind Control]] -- How the Dominators dominate. Jaggar is the only one able to resist them.
* [[Mutants]] -- Quite a few distinct species exist (at least before [[The Purge]]), such as [[Exactly What It Says
* [[A Nazi
* [[One-Gender Race]] -- {{spoiler|Humanity, at the end. Since the Dominators' spiteful radiation bomb has ruined mankind's genome, cloning is used to create the next generation of [[Ubermensch]], who are all tall, blue-eyed, blond males.}}
* [[Only the Chosen May Wield]] -- Only Jaggar can wield the Truncheon of Held.
* [[Putting
* [[Schizo-Tech]] -- The book starts in a post-apocalyptic world where steam-powered buses are common transportation, but swiftly moves through World War II-level weaponry before ending with cloning and interstellar spaceships.
* [[The Smurfette Principle]]
** There is not a single line of dialogue in ''Lord of the Swastika'' spoken by a woman. The words 'she' and 'her' simply do not appear at any point in the book.
** There is in fact an appearance by the fairer sex in this book! Specifically:
{{quote|
** A while after the last example, it is reported to Jaggar that nearly forty thousand pure human females have been found suitable for breeding with the SS.
* [[Space Jews]] -- The Dominators of Zind, intentionally.
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* [[Stylistic Suck]]
** Hitler's not a very good author.
** As anyone who's read even a few short passages of ''[[
* [[Take That]] -- The book suggests that in the real world, the works of certain specific sf and fantasy writers, their [[Fandom]], and the science fiction and fantasy genres as a whole at large have [[Unfortunate Implications]] - see the [[The Iron Dream
* [[Viewers Are Geniuses]] -- Spinrad expected his readership to, in effect, get the joke. Of course, not everyone did.
* [[We Have Reserves]] -- Millions and millions of them, in the Dominators' case.
* [[Who Would Be Stupid Enough...?]] -- The author analyzing Hitler's story notes that while some fans may yearn for such a decisive and iron-willed leader to save them from Soviet domination, he concludes that no rational person would ever stand such a clearly delusional, bloodthirsty tyrant, and that they certainly wouldn't be swayed by [[wikipedia:File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-04062A, N%C3%BCrnberg, Reichsparteitag, SA- und SS-Appell.jpg|snappy uniforms, precision marching, and gigantic displays of stirring imagery]].
* [[Word of God]] -- The framing commentator/literary agent says that Hitler in the alternative timeline died of syphilis, which slowly ate away at his brain. This accounts for (some of) the wild excesses of the later part of the novel.
* [[You Cloned Hitler]] -- Well, Feric Jaggar.
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[[Category:The Iron Dream]]
[[Category:Literature]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Iron Dream, The}}
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