A Colder War

By: Charles Stross

Narrated by: Pat Bottino

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

Critic reviews

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

Good continuation

Was very happy to see a good continuation of Lovecraft's st "At the Mountains of Madness".

Great Story... Marginal Narration

What did you love best about A Colder War?

It's a Laundry Files universe story.

What did you like best about this story?

The particular plot of this story

What didn’t you like about Pat Bottino’s performance?

Sounds too much like a fast talking film noir detective.I kept waiting for him to say

Confirms HP Lovecraft's genius...

Charles Stross seamlessly embraces alternative universe of Chtulu Mythos in modern day historical settings. The distance between science fiction and scientific fact is growing shorter exponentially even Lovecraft's universe never foresaw Social media or did it. Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest... World eating mind not living but never dead...

Really fun listen

If you love HP Lovecraft, then you'll go crazy for this "modern", tongue-in-cheek alternative history.

I have one phrase for you:

We have a Weakly-God-Like-Entity Gap.

Horrible Narration

I don’t know if he was having a bad day, or it was intentional, but the narration was so horrible I went and previewed another audiobook (he did some Plato) by the narrator and found he was capable of a much better, so I don’t know what the issue was here. It’s a darker precursor to the Laundry Files, so if you like that or Delta Green, then the story is probably for you. You can find the text free online, so my rec is skip this audiobook, and just go read that or just start in on The Laundry Files or something else entirely.