The Iron Heel by Jack London

I'm not sure how I ended up reading this one but it was probably a list of dystopian novels that I wrote things down and just started working though them. I knew nothing about this when I started it and the way it is written, I kind of fell for the "trick" that this book is using on the viewer even though I am 100 years late to the party.

First published in 1908, this book is a political thriller of sorts but it is read sort of like it is "found footage" of a memoir and someone keeps jumping in to give additional information about what happened after the events. It is kind of like a Blair Witch Project sort of scheme in that the footnotes that appear throughout are meant to be some scholar that is giving us additional information that wasn't available when the memoir was first discovered.

I fell for it and ended up skipping a lot of the footnotes because I started to kind of view them as spoilers. I feel like an idiot because of this but I was reading it on a Kindle so to me, it looked like some super-fan of the novel was putting their own spin on the story and I was unaware that was the entire point of the publication. Lol. I'm an idiot sometime but I didn't figure this out until after the book was finished because I am afraid of finding spoilers if I look anything up before I am done.

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The book is originally "authored" (the fiction of the novel) by Avis Everhard who is the daughter of conservative physicist John Cunningham, who meets and eventually marries a socialist politician and activist who calmly attempts to convince people about the existence of the "Iron Heel" which is a group of overlords who operate outside of the rule of law and dictate the lives of all people including the politicians that they elect in an effort to constantly maintain and grow their own wealth and power, while keeping the working man living in squalor and abject poverty. They are able to pull this off through the creation of unions that convince the working class they are protected but at the same time the "Iron Heel" offers incentives to the leaders of these Unions to consistently sell out their own people and become one of the top people. These offers are always false as the Iron Heel doesn't want or need new members and what they do is always a trick.

There is of course a lot more to it than what I just said above, but it does kind of get distressing to see how far and wide this group of oligarchs actually can reach. Just when it appears as though the common man is going to experience some small victory such as winning some elections that the regular people feel will put the population back on that path of benefit for all mankind, the Iron Heel devises some new method of usurping their newly found representation.

it is described in a very easy-to-understand way and Ernest Everhard is very convincing even though when he first starts to present his case to people that disagree with him, they at first don't believe him. But when they are unable to refute the sage things he says in their discussions, they soon come over to his side and well, once they do things start to become very bad for them.

No one is safe from the Iron Heel: Esteemed educators find themselves blacklisted, with their assets suddenly becoming not their own anymore through some legal loophole, and even spiritual leaders are accused of mental illness and placed in sanitariums with no end in sight. The Iron Heel's extend of power seems to have no bounds, and it is truly depressing to see how try as they may, there is no escape from their ever-extending power.

There are some good points in there that I think are definitely in place in today's real world (and perhaps has been since the time this was written) such as the media being under the control of this oligarchy and how they will skew anything that is said against them to make the person saying it appear stupid, insane, or as a downright enemy of the people. The media pretends to be unbiased but they are actually completely under the control of the people in power who will not let that power go and will destroy anyone and everyone who gets in their way.

I don't think it was necessarily intentional at the time of writing over 100 years ago, but perhaps this power vacuum has always been in place and Jack London simply saw the writing on the wall long before other were able to.

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This novel is considered to be the "earliest of modern dystopian fiction" and therefore, for someone like me this was very much worth reading.

There are times that it seems like socialist propaganda and that may turn a few people away but just read on anyway. I don't really think that this book has been kept in publication for over a century just to use for political reasons although if it was, that would be the ultimate irony considering the overall theme of the book.

I would normally include a pic of Nadi (my dog) with the book in question but this time it was a Kindle version and there was no cover art included. So instead you get a picture of her doing one of her favorite things now that she is old: Sleeping.

Here is the GoodReads link if you are into that sort of thing. I believe this book can be acquired for free without even breaking the law to do so, because of how old it is. If you live in the west you could also head to your public library as they will almost certainly have a copy of a book as historical as this one.

I recommend this book to people who appreciate dystopian fiction. I was unaware that this was the "first" one of that sort when I was reading it and that makes it even more special to me.