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A Colder War cover art

A Colder War

By: Charles Stross
Narrated by: Pat Bottino
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Publisher's Summary

The biggest single threat to NATO may be the Shoggoth Gap. The wild card is Lt. Col. Oliver North, President Reagan's man. Roger Jourgensen, CIA operative, is at the center of this crisis. If all the political wrangling doesn't work out perfectly, there will be hell to pay, or worse - far, far worse.

Here is a modern novelette in H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos that is rich in detail and frightening in execution. Stross' stunning tale will pull you back into the cold-war era, engendering fear and then magnifying it into non-euclidean infinities. Imagine David Cronenberg directing Dr. Strangelove, based on a script by H. P. Lovecraft. Imagine an alternate history in which nuclear bombs are not the ultimate weapon, but instead are merely a stepping stone to eldritch technologies accessible through certain trans-dimensional forces first encountered in 1920s Antarctica, technologies that neither the United States nor the USSR can quite contain.

Stross has admitted that "A Colder War" was directly inspired by Lovecraft's novel At the Mountains of Madness. The amount of research and historical mastery Stross sprinkles throughout the narrative creates the verisimilitude necessary for truly effective alternate history.

©2000 Spectrum SF3 (P)2005 AudioText
Science Fiction Anthologies & Short Stories
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Critic Reviews

"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" ( sffaudio.com)

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Profile Image for Peter R Jones

Cold War Lovecraftian Horror

What's not to love? A Lovecraftian tale set during the Cold War. And by Charles Stross, no less. (Okay, sure, I had not read anything by Charles Stross before this, but I've got a few of his books on my TBR list.)

Sadly, the narration makes this tale almost impossible to get into--and once you get past that, well ... it *is* very Lovecraftian, I'll give it that, but I find that much as I love the works of Lovecraft, I've reached the point that the multiple levels of narration and distance he wrapped around the nugget of his story have just become too much for me. I prefer a little more directness these days. So no doubt if you love Lovecraft's craft, you'll love this story; I only found it frustrating...

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An awful robot, regrets

Awful presenter, a robot reading words, nothing to connect me with the real story. I love this story and regret letting such an inferior narrator guide me through even the opening words,

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