The Iron Heel

While he is best known for his stories of adventure in the outdoors, such as "White Fang" and "The Call of the Wild," London also wrote a significant body of science fiction, including the caveman novel, "Before Adam" (1906), the post-holocaust novel, "The Scarlet Plague" (1912), and "The Star Rover," a book about a convict under torture who can project his mind to far times and places, which profoundly influenced Robert E. Howard. "The Iron Heel" (1907) is a major work of dystopian fiction, the product of London's Socialism, about a fascist-capitalist tyranny in the United States in the 20th century and its struggle with the enslaved proletariat. As such it is an important ancestor to Zamyatin's "We" and Orwell's 1984."