Fri May 8 20:43:43 2020
<5547a085> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel>
<5547a085> _*The Iron Heel*_ is a <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopian_literature|dystopian><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel#cite_note-jcpn2-1|[1]> novel by American writer <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London|Jack London>, first published in 1908.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel#cite_note-Kershaw164-2|[2]>
Generally considered to be “the earliest of the modern dystopian” fiction,<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel#cite_note-3|[3]> it chronicles the rise of an <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy|oligarchic> tyranny in the United States. In _The Iron Heel_, Jack London’s <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism|socialist> views are explicitly on display. A forerunner of <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_science_fiction|soft science fiction>
novels and stories of the 1960s and 70s, the book stresses future
changes in society and politics while paying much less attention to
technological changes.[_<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed|citation needed>_]
The book is unusual among London’s writings (and in the literature of the time in general) in being a <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_narrative|first-person narrative> of a woman protagonist written by a man. Much of the narrative is set in the <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area|San Francisco Bay Area>, including events in San Francisco and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoma_County,_California|Sonoma County>.
<5547a085> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia>
<5547a085> _*Homage to Catalonia*_ is <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell|George Orwell>’s personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_faction_(Spanish_Civil_War)|Republican> army during the <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War|Spanish Civil War>.
The war was one of the shaping events on his political outlook and a
significant part of what led him to write, in 1946, “Every line of
serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly
or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism|Democratic Socialism>, as I understand it.”