Iron and Orange

Books read this week: The Iron Dream (Norman Spinrad), William The Silent (C.V. Wedgwood)

Norman Spinrad's Iron Dream is an interesting, although ultimately unsuccessful experiment in what might be termed alternative historical literature. The basic hypothesis of the book is that Adolf Hitler, becoming disillusioned with the NSDAP, emigrates to America, abandons politics and becomes a pulp science fiction writer, eventually expiring from tertiary syphilis in 1953, shortly after finishing his magnum opus, Lords of The Swastika, the text of which forms the majority of the Iron Dream.

There is an interesting debate to be had about the fascist tendencies of science fiction and fantasy - JRR Tolkien was himself uncomfortable with the orcs he created, precisely because the idea of an entire race born evil  was extremely troubling to him. Unfortunately, that debate is not to be had in the Iron Dream, primarily because it is about as subtle as a 500 foot tall neon flashing billboard saying "Nazis are Bad!", but also because it reads as if it was written by a sexually repressed syphilitic madman. I know that was the intention, but it doesn't make the book enjoyable. The plot (such as it is) follows the ubermenschen Feric Jaggar (Hitler) as he rises to power in the land of Helden, the last 'genetically pure' country in a world destroyed by nuclear fire. The plot is basically World War II as Hitler would liked it to have gone, but is (quite deliberately) almost incoherent and illogical, with paper thin characterisation and lots of phallic steel truncheons. Phallic steel truncheons everywhere.

As I said, this is unfortunate, because there are things to be said about the inherent fascist tendencies of a lot of fantastic fiction - whether it is the tendency for the protagonist to be a perfect specimen of humanity and a 'chosen one', or the unfortunately regularity with which beauty is associated with goodness and the ugliness with evil. A lot of this is the result of how science fiction is designed to appeal to the inner child; we want life to be simple - good guys wear white hats and only do nice things, bad guys wear black hats and do bad things and will inevitably be defeated by the end of the episode.  Fascism taps into this, with the added twist that the bad guys are inevitably some small, relatively powerless group. We can blame them for all our problems; it's their fault. And they can be victimised without fear of consequences because they, in reality, don't have the power to fight back.

I think a further contributing factor is that it is harder to make democracy interesting; it is easier to make a single, brooding hero's decision dramatic than a meeting of the general subcommittee on war production. It is easier to write a gripping battle scene than a stirring parliamentary debate. And democracy tends to be untidy. A hero singlehandedly vanquishing the evil overlord is easy to write; a true popular revolution is hard. Partly because there is no central character - no hero to hang a narrative on. Why did Mrs Smith refuse to pay double yesterday's price for bread? Was it Mr Jones who threw the first stone in the square? When did Private Atkins first decide not to fire on the demonstrators? Much easier to just follow the Chosen One when he (and it is almost invariably he) returns to claim his birthright. No one ever seems to ask exactly why birth confers those particular rights.

Of course, this is not to say that we can't enjoy books that have unfortunate implications or unpleasant ideas. You could write a book (and someone probably has) on the way in which HP Lovecraft's scariest stories are all based around Lovecraft's gnawing fear that one of his ancestors might be black. It means Lovecraft was a very unpleasant person. It doesn't mean I can't appreciate that his stories are extremely scary.

My second book this week was a biography of William The Silent, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the Netherlands. It's given me some insight into a region and a period I don't know much about - most of my knowledge of the Sea Beggars and the Dutch struggle for religious and national independence comes from its impact on Elizabeth I's foreign policy, and so it was interesting to see events as it were from the Dutch perspective. William himself emerges as a deeply tragic figure - desperately seeking an accord between the fanatically Catholic Philip II and the equally fanatic Calvinists of the Low Countries, before eventually deciding that humanity outweighed loyalty and joining the rebels. He married four times, and buried two wives, and his eldest son spent thirty years in a Spanish prison. William himself met his end on an assassin's bullet. It is also interesting how, for a general in a national war of independence, William devoted the majority of his time to politics - even to the extent that he inflicted the names Antwerpiana and Flandrina upon his daughters, in an attempt to win over those provinces. It is also a good example of what I said before; revolutions are always bigger than one man, no matter how powerful, charismatic and influential he may be.