Talk:The Iron Dream

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How sure are we that the book was banned in Germany? The cover copy on the version I have says BANNED IN GERMANY--BURNING INTO HISTORY--ADOLF HITLER'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL! right above a picture of good ol' Adolf with a red cape on a futuristic motorcycle. So is there another source for this? I doubt the veracity of the cover copy. grendel|khan 21:39, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Banned or not

Okay, I wrote to Spinrad himself on this, and here's what he told me:

"It was put on the "Index," and that is what they call it. Under German law, anyone can complain to an authority called the "Bundesprufsteller" (but don't trust my spelling or German), made up of ministers, priests, other such non-governmental notables, that a book, record, movie, whatever, is dangerous to the mental health of youth whether it was intended for youth or not.
The offending item is guilty until proven innocent once it is indexed, but in the meantime it is not entirely banned. During the 8 years THE IRON DREAM was on the Index while the publisher, Heyne Verlag, fought all the way up through the legal system to the German equivalent of the Supreme Court and eventually won, it could be sold, but not advertised or publically displayed.
That is the summary of 8 years of complicated legal action." DS 23:34, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Great work! Wonder why I didn't think of that. Some quick googling [1] shows that the Bundesprüfstelle (BPS) became active (or re-activated) in February 1982, and that one of the first books it banned was The Iron Dream. (According to Google's translator, Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften means "federal inspection station for youth-endangering writings", which sounds about right.) There's an article on de, which I've requested be translated. grendel|khan 17:17, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
Okay, Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (all media, not just writing) looks just about finished. Now, how to incorporate this... DS 14:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, but the information on that page [2] is, ahem, less than exact. Neither is the BPJM "Willhelmian" nor was it (re)activated in 1982. I took the liberty of correcting that ;-) Killersepp 03:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed spoiler warning

I removed the spoiler warning. It should be quite obvious to anybody that an article discussing a book will "give away" plot details. --Morningmusic 13:31, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

That may be true, but it is nevertheless standard practice to have them. --Gwern (contribs) 15:56, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, The spoiler warning should stay. wtf did you remove it? any other article about a fictional work has a spoiler warning. 121.44.0.182 06:22, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dystopian?

It seems to me Spinrad is postulating a world where, given Hitler doesn't become Führer, things actually go a great deal worse, including a nuclear war in Europe. Can this be substantiated? Trekphiler 07:06, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how you are reading that into it. It's Hitler's war which forces his enemies into detonating the bomb after their total defeat and imminent annihilation. --Gwern (contribs) 16:13 9 June 2007 (GMT)
If he was postulating a world where Hitler does not become Führer and things actually get a great deal worse, what is the problem? And how do you expect this to be substantiated? You seem to assume it to be possible to establish evidence to prove/disprove this possibility. How do you expect anyone to be able to do this, when we are talking about a fictional story about and alternative future? If you have the ability of trans-dimensional travel, please let us know!
Your sarcasm is not warranted here. It's obvious that Trekphiler is wrong, since the entire story, up until the end, is an idealized and exaggerated version of what Hitler and the Nazis would have liked to do. In the story, the Hitler-analogue takes total control of Helm, utterly eliminates every last mutant and non-Aryan in his country through perfect and scientific methods, and then utterly obliterates his enemies.
In reality, Hitler's genocide was not nearly so successful or thorough as the Hitler-analogue's is portrayed as being, his military campaigns not nearly so successful (needless to say), etc. Spinrad's ending is ambiguous: from our liberal democratic POV, the ending demonstrates that even when things go perfectly for the Nazis, their ideology and actions are so insane and destructive that they literally cause the end of the world (by not respecting nuclear deterrence); but from the Helm/Nazi POV, the ending is quite satisfactory, as the old impure world is cleansed of its evil life and only selected pure new specimens go on to colonize newer and better worlds.
If we haven't figured out the dual role of the story, where we as typical fantasy/sci-fi readers mindlessly identify with the allegory and root for the Nazis, then the epilogue makes it brutally clear (to our chagrin) that we can understand the rise of the Nazis (which rise is piously declaimed as un-understandable and a deep mystery why the sensible and civilized Germans could ever have whole-heartedly embraced fascism) as merely a result of the same tendencies to which the inner story of The Iron Dream appealed to. In short, by reading the inner story and not realizing that the ethics and morals of fantasy literature when applied to the real world are the same thing as fascism, we learn that we all have a little Nazi inside.
I hope that makes this clearer for you. --Gwern (contribs) 13:06 5 August 2007 (GMT)

[edit] Strange sentence

"Notably, in this version of the Second World War there is no analogue to America, to intevene and put itself in the balance against Germany/Helder - a rather strange omission considering that the book was supposedly written by a Hitler who emigrated to America and had lived there for thirty years at the time of writing."

This sentence doesn't make sense to me. In this alternate history he's a science fiction author. It needs to be elaborated or deleted, the way it's phrased it's only left me puzzled as to what the contributor meant to say.Krum Stanoev 17:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I deleted it; I can't figure out how it would make sense. grendel|khan 14:56, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
I guess the person who wrote it was confusing the fictional non-fictional world of the book's fictional Hitler with the book's fictional Hitler's fictional fictional world. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 09:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Color me impressed! --Gwern (contribs) 21:54 21 December 2007 (GMT)

[edit] Thx

Image:WikiThanks.png I'd like to thank those who have worked on this article for their impressive handling of a thematically and narratively difficult subject. The article is nicely written and well-structured, particularily in describing the frame tale first, the plot second and the representations last. Good show. --Kizor 13:06, 18 May 2008 (UTC)