Jack London an American writer published The Iron Heel a dystopian novel. London also followed a journalism career and became a social activist. They considered him as the “forerunner” of soft science fiction novels and the stories of the 1960s and 1970s. They published this book as a dystopian fiction Novel and is “the earliest of modern dystopian fiction”. This book displays Jack’s socialist views and is unusual among the other writings of Jack London.
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Author: Jack London
Genre: Dystopian fiction
Pages: 288
Good reads rating: 3.8 of 5
My Ratings: 8 of 10
Published: 1908 (Original publication)
Publisher: Penguin Classics; Penguin Ed edition (July 25, 2006)
Language: English
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***Warning Spoilers Below This Point***
When the philosophy of Karl Marx’s socialism took the world, it seemed revolutionary from many perspectives. It spread across the universe and later Marxist-Leninism became dominant before the first world war. The author wrote this book in the year 1908 when society was likely to see a world war in some next years. The book appears to favour socialism and mentions the Proletariat by introducing the cruelty of the bourgeoisie.
The book mentions a document called “Everhard Manuscript” along with commentary and exegesis by Anthony Meredith. They composed this manuscript by Avis Everhard, who was a capitalist and later embraced socialism along with her lover Ernest Everhard. She became unconvinced by the socialists but embraced it after she noticed all the suffering in the world.
Among the predictions as mentioned in the book, they include the prediction of the first revolt (or maybe the first world war) which the author considers a direct attack on the oligarchy and capitalist outlook of the society. A second revolt interestingly predicted became an accurate prediction of the century. Another one is the Independence of India mentioned in this book and which came true some years after writing the novel. He also foretold the conquests of Imperial Japan in East Asia. These predictions are almost true, but the book confines the dates to the years 1912 to 1932. Some of these predictions came true after them.
Well, this is not all about predictions, but it covered the story of Avis Everhard and her marriage to Ernest Everhard along with the changes in their opinions. It also mentions many adventures, and we can see the revolutionary nature of socialists in this novel. The book is not neutral but presents and describes a specific philosophy.
The book is typically a work of dystopian fiction that predicts many future events and they offer some correct viewpoints that changed into nearly true events. My rating for this novel is 8 out of 10. Would I re-read this novel? Yes. Am I glad I read it? Yes.
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