Preview of The Iron Dream Summary:

Like its societal concerns, The Iron Dream's themes come out on several different levels. The most important is the horrific image of power-lust and aggression run amok. Along with this, there is also a lesson in the ease with which Jaggar takes over Heldon's government. Although in "Hitler's" fantasy it was always inevitable, the failure of good men to do anything made it easier. Even the council members he displaced offered little protest. Their docility did not save them; they were summarily executed anyway.

The second thematic level is that of the pornography of violence. Feric Jaggar employs television spectacles of street fights and then of gory battle scenes to titillate and energize Heldon's citizens. Professor Whipple describes Hitler's whole book as an exaggeration of pulp sword-and-sorcery motifs. In his nonfiction Science Fiction in the Real World (1990), Spinrad has exposed science fiction's "dirty little secret." Whatever the surface...