The Iron Heel - FULL
Audio Book - by
Jack London - Dystopian
Fiction - - The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by
American writer Jack London, first published in
1908. Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian," it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the
United States. It is arguably the novel in which
Jack London's socialist views are most explicitly on display. A forerunner of soft science fiction novels and stories of the
1960s and
1970s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes.
The book is unusual among
London's writings (and in the literature of the time in general) in being a first-person narrative of a woman protagonist written by a man. Much of the narrative is set in the
San Francisco Bay Area, including events in
San Francisco and
Sonoma County.
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Chapter Listing and
Length:
00 -
Foreword -- 00:08:39
01 - My
Eagle -- 00:28:51
02 -
Challenges -- 00:27:41
03 -
Jackson's Arm -- 00:21:04
04 -
Slaves of the
Machine -- 00:16:26
05 - The Philomaths -- 00:42:29
06 - Adumbrations -- 00:15:03
07 -
The Bishop's
Vision -- 00:12:45
08 -
The Machine Breakers -- 00:29:13
09 - The
Mathematics of a
Dream -- 00:32:53
10 -
The Vortex -- 00:18:10
11 -
The Great Adventure -- 00:15:36
12 - The Bishop -- 00:20:15
13 -
The General Strike -- 00:18:23
14 -
The Beginning of the End -- 00:16:26
15 -
Last Days -- 00:11:02
16 -
The End -- 00:19:38
17 - The
Scarlet Livery -- 00:17:54
18 -
In the Shadow of
Sonoma -- 00:16:47
19 -
Transformation -- 00:16:55
20 - A
Lost Oligarch -- 00:14:42
21 - The Roaring
Abysmal Beast -- 00:12:42
22 - The
Chicago Commune -- 00:22:59
23 -
The People of the Abyss -- 00:24:49
24 -
Nightmare -- 00:12:18
25 -
The Terrorists -- 00:03:59
More about Jack London's "The Iron Heel" -
The novel is based on the (fictional) "Everhard Manuscript" written by
Avis Everhard which she hid and which was subsequently found centuries later. In addition, this novel has an introduction and series of (often lengthy) footnotes written from the perspective of scholar
Anthony Meredith. Meredith writes from around 2600 AD or 419
B.O.M. (the
Brotherhood of Man). Jack London thus writes at two levels, often having Meredith condescendingly correcting the errors of Everhard yet, at the same time, exposing the often incomplete understanding of this distant future perspective.
Given that The Iron Heel is over a century old, this novel has a somewhat alternate history feel because, as with Orwell's
1984, the dating of these novels is now in the past. Jack London ambitiously predicted a breakdown of the US republic starting a few years past 1908 but various events have caused his predicted future to diverge from actual history. Most crucially, though
London placed quite accurately the time when international tensions will reach their peak (1913 in "The Iron Heel",
1914 in actual history), he (like many others at the time) predicted that when this moment came labor solidarity would prevent a war that would include the US,
Germany, and other nations. In reality, international solidarity of labor and socialists did not avert war.
Further, London assumed that the
Socialist Party would become a mass party in the United States, as the book is based on
Marx's view that capitalism was inherently unsustainable. This would precipitate a brutal counter-reaction, with capitalists preserving their power by discarding democracy and instituting a brutal repressive regime. Although this exact scenario never came to pass in the US, where the Socialist Party remained small and marginal, events closely followed London's script elsewhere -- for example in
Chile in
1973, where the government of Socialist president
Salvador Allende was overthrown by a
CIA backed coup and forces led by
General Augusto Pinochet.
The assumption of a strong and militant mass Socialist Party emerging in the US was linked with London predicting that the middle class would shrink as monopolistic trusts crushed labor and small to mid-sized businesses.
Instead the US
Progressive Era led to a breakup of the trusts, notably the application of the
Sherman Antitrust Act to
Standard Oil in
1911; at the same time, reforms such as labor unions rights passed during the Progressive Era with further reforms during the New
Deal of the
1930s. Further, economic prosperity led to dramatic growth of the middle class in the
1920s and after
World War II.
Total running time: 8:17:39
This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain.
Read by
Matt Soar
In addition to the reader, this audio book was produced by:
Dedicated Proof-Listener: Elli
Meta-Coordinator/Cataloging:
Diana Majlinger
- published: 14 Nov 2012
- views: 13276