The Iron Heel - by Jack London

 

In my recent blog post on We by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, I wrote that I had discovered this on wikipedia:
"Along with Jack London's The Iron Heel, We is generally considered to be the grandfather of the satirical futuristic dystopia genre".

This lead me to do a little research on both Jack London and his dystopian novel - The Iron Heel.

Although I had read Call of the Wild  in 2016, I was unfamiliar with Jack London's views on politics and religion. Reading the wikipedia article on London, I learned that he was an atheist, a Marxist, and a supporter of eugenics. His views on Asian immigration to California were less than "woke" as well.

In The Iron Heel London's Marxist views are on full display. Through out most of the early sections of the novel, we are lectured on the glories of Socialism and the evils of Capitalism, the railroads, the banks, newspapers, universities, the Church and the government. Many of the folks in ANTIFA and BLM would applaud most of London's lectures.

The novel was published in 1908 with nearly all the events taking place at a future date. The story is the "memoir" of Avis Everhard who tells the story of her husband Ernest and his attempts at bringing about a socialist revolution in the United States. It's revealed almost immediately in the novel that the 20th century socialist revolution will fail, but the "memoir" is discovered 300 years in the future, after the revolution is eventually successful.

Very little of London's predictions in the novel come to pass. His future is not our past nor our present, by any means.

When London focuses more on the action in the novel - rather than his Marxist propaganda - the story is quite good. London was a remarkable story teller even if his political views were bunk. As a dystopian novel, it's an easier read than either We or 1984.