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The Iron Dream, an alternate history novel about a writer named Adolf Hitler, was banned for eight years in Germany. What drew you to that story and why did you describe the writing of it as “unpleasant”? NS: Try reading everything Hitler ever wrote for the purpose of being able to channel him and write in his turgid style and see how you like it! I didn’t really know what I was into until I was into it. By the time I finished the novel, I hated it. Only over a few years of awards, world-wide publication, good to rave reviews, did I realize it was the process of writing The Iron Dream that I hated, not the novel itself. What drew me to write it was that the economic and political reasons for the rise of Nazi Germany never convinced me. Hitler was a media genius, and Nazism a psychosexual phenomenon. … Like a certain species of “heroic fantasy.” Hitler was a big fan of Wagnerian Opera at a time when “Space Opera” had a big fandom too. “Homer Whipple’s” afterward sort of tells the tale, and was the only part of the novel I really enjoyed writing. |