The Iron Heel

Jack London’s dystopian novel The Iron Heel posits a futuristic world in which the division between the classes has deepened, creating a menacing oligarchy that rules through terror. 

Anticipating the science fiction novels of the 1960s and '70s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying less attention to technological details. Much of the narrative is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, including events in San Francisco and Sonoma County.


The Iron Heel is cited by George Orwell's biographer Michael Shelden as having influenced Orwell's immortal masterpiece about the future Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell himself described London as having made "a very remarkable prophecy of the rise of Fascism," in the book and believed that London's understanding of the primitive had made him a better prophet "than many better-informed and more logical thinkers."


This new digital edition of The Iron Heel includes an image gallery.