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''The Iron Dream'' is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by 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 SF-veneer. Spinrad was intent on demonstrating just how close Joseph Campbell's ''The 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. ==Plot== 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 the science fantasy novel ''Lord of the Swastika'' in six weeks in 1953, shortly before dying of cerebral hemorrhage〔''The Iron Dream'' pg 245〕 (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 science fiction novels include ''The Master Race'', ''The Thousand Year Rule'', and ''The Triumph of the Will''. In Whipple's review following the narrative, we learn more about the background of the alternate history in which Hitler emigrated to the United States. Without Hitler's leadership, the National Socialist German Workers' Party fell apart in 1923 and the Communist Party of Germany succeeded in fomenting a German communist revolution in 1930. As this alternate history continues, there is reference to a "Greater Soviet Union" which took over the United Kingdom in 1948, and whose influence is growing in Latin America by 1959. The fact that Whipple refers to World War I as "the Great War" several times implies that there has been no equivalent of World War II in this world. Nevertheless, nuclear weapons seem either to be technologically plausible, or to have been developed as a deterrent against the Greater Soviet Union's expansionism, as a nuclear apocalypse forms a core element of the historical backstory of ''Lord of the Swastika''. Whipple also discloses that the Empire of Japan has retained its militarism, with reference to its bushido code of conduct, while the United States vacillates against the Greater Soviet Union's ascendancy. Due to the Greater Soviet Union threat, the United States and Japan have moved towards a closer military and strategic alliance. Japanese militarist values are much admired in the United States. Japan and the United States are the only two major powers standing between the Greater Soviet Union and total control of the globe—yet most Americans seem unable to be roused to deal with the Soviet threat. Whipple wonders what the emergence of an American leader like Feric Jaggar, the hero of ''Lord of the Swastika'', could accomplish. Finally, there is a casual mention of the fact that, while in this history Nazi Germany never came into being, it is the Soviets who have undertaken the systematic genocide of all Jews in Europe—and since this is perpetrated by the Soviets, there is no power left whose armies might stop it and save at least a remnant of the Jews from this version of the Holocaust. ''Lord of the Swastika'' is lauded for its qualities as a great work of heroic fantasy. To further hammer the point, in an early edition, actual science fiction writers wrote faux sincere "admiring" blurbs for Spinrad for the novel's back cover blurbs, praising "Hitler's" writing skills. Irony abounds in Whipple's review, as he singles out the mechanisms such as sheer force, midnight rallies, and phallic symbolism that in fact characterized Nazism's rise to power in Germany, blithely assuring us that such a rise would be quite ludicrous to contemplate in real life.〔"Indeed, in the book Hitler seems to assume that masses of men in fetishistic uniforms marching in precise displays and displaying phallic gestures and paraphernalia will have a powerful appeal to ordinary human beings. Feric Jaggar comes to power in Heldon through little more than a grotesque series of increasingly grandiose phallic displays. This is undoubtedly phallic fetishism on the part of the author, since the alternative conclusion is to accept the ridiculous notion that an entire nation would throw itself at the feet of a leader simply on the basis of mass displays of public fetishism, orgies of blatant phallic symbolism, and mass rallies enlivened with torchlight and rabid oratory. Obviously, such a mass national psychosis could never occur in the real world..." pg 249〕 "After all", Dr. Whipple says, "it can't happen here."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Iron Dream」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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