The Iron Dream
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Cover of first edition (paperback)
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| Author | Norman Spinrad |
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| Cover artist | Bob Habberfield |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Alternate history, science fiction |
| Publisher | Avon Books |
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Publication date
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September 1972 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 255 pp |
| ISBN | (first Avon printing) |
| OCLC | 2527317 |
The Iron Dream is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by American author Norman Spinrad. The book has a nested narrative that tells a story within a story. On the surface, the novel presents an unexceptional pulp, post-apocalypse science fiction action tale entitled Lord of the Swastika. However, this is a pro-fascism narrative written by an alternate-history Adolf Hitler, who in this timeline emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1919 after the Great War, and used his modest artistic skills to become first a pulp–science fiction illustrator and later a successful science fiction writer, telling lurid, purple-prosed adventure stories under a thin science fiction-veneer.
Spinrad was intent on demonstrating just how close Joseph Campbell's hero with a thousand faces and much science fiction and fantasy literature can be to the racist ideology of Nazi Germany. The nested narrative is followed by a faux scholarly analysis by a fictional literary critic, Homer Whipple, of New York University, which is said to have been written in 1959.
The book's frame narrative and premise is that "after dabbling in radical politics", Adolf Hitler emigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a science fiction illustrator, editor and author. He wrote his final science fantasy novel Lord of the Swastika in six weeks in 1953, shortly before dying of cerebral hemorrhage (possibly caused by tertiary syphilis); Lord of the Swastika subsequently wins the Hugo Award and the "colorful uniforms" described therein become a regular feature of cosplayers at science fiction conventions. Hitler's other published works include the long-running fanzine Storm and the novels The Master Race, The Thousand Year Rule, and The Triumph of the Will.
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