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A Colder War

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A Colder War

By: Charles Stross
Narrated by: Pat Bottino
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About this listen

 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 Anthologies & Short Stories Science Fiction Fiction War Emotionally Gripping Technology

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Critic reviews

"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" ( sffaudio.com)
All stars
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I don't normally pick on an inexperienced narrator. But this guy talks in a monotone for every character. Dashing colonel, down south bumpkin, Harford professor...

This a truly Cthulhu mythos story, and at time of writing the only option. But it is SO BAD.

Just appalling narration

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Absolutely excellent story that combines significant elements of the Cthulhu Mythos and 1980's Ronnie Raygun Military-Industrial complex black-ops. Stross later developed the 'horror-spy' theme in 'The Atrocity Archives,' and 'The Jennifer Morgue' - alas neither available on Audible, yet.

Historical events of the Reagan era are seamlessly woven into the story culminating in events Lovecraft (and Reagan) never envisaged.

The only downside is the slightly odd way the in which the story is narrated. Overall though well worth buying.

Excellent Story.

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'A colder war' is Stross's reframing of the Cold War as a Lovecraftian balance of terror in which the arms race revolves, not around nukes (here humanity's last-ditch defence) but around possession and control of the horrors from beyond the stars. The point of view is that of an intelligence analyst processing reports in a Reagan-esque USA, and very forcefully makes Stross's case that what spooks truly fear is paper. However, there are worse things out there than paper and the story does not end well, at least for the humans. Much of the fascination of the story is that it is an intelligence procedural, neither a spy story nor a tale of magicians, with the central character drawn ever deeper into the black ops orchestrated by the Colonel (at the least a very close relation of Oliver North). Stross's voice here is perfect - unsensational, unemotional, letting the horrors speak for themselves, and the narrator supports it perfectly. The audiobook is a great delivery of a great story.

If you're a Laundry files fan, you'll probably like this a lot. As well as being eminently worth a listen for itself, it gives an airing to a lot of themes later explored at greater length by Bob Howard and his colleagues. If you aren't, please give it a go anyway. It's Lovecraftiana's answer to le Carre.

A classic story, and a great listen

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Great follow up to The Mountains of Madness! it builds slowly but the end will leave you shivering.

slow thriller

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A superb story that mixes 80s military paranoia with Lovecraftian cosmic horror in a world where a nuclear holocaust may be preferable to the other weapons the superpowers can unleash.
Sadly, the reading is rather poor - badly paced, almost monotone at times. Due to the speed at which it is read punctuation is ignored in places. Maybe the idea was to capture a feeling of numbed senses and rising hysteria, if so it failed. Overall, one loses the subtleties of Charles Stross' writing beneath the poor delivery. Such a shame with such a good story.

I hope that Audible will produce the same author's excellent books "The Atrocity Archives" and "The Jennifer Morgue" that re-work and develop some of the themes found in "A Colder War", however, if they are produced I hope more attention will be paid to getting the reading right.

Great Story - Poor Reading

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seriously. it's like he's been told that he just needs to keep reading out words that he's never seen before from a page in some sort of bizarre squid game challenge.

the worst voice actor I've ever heard, unlistenabl

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If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

The book might be fine, I just couldn't stick it out long enough to find out.

Would you recommend A Colder War to your friends? Why or why not?

I'd recommend buying the book perhaps, but not the audio book.

Would you be willing to try another one of Pat Bottino’s performances?

Categorically, no. I've heard text-to-speech programmes with more life in them - I'm not sure, but perhaps they decided a rambling, robotic monotone would be more science-fiction-like than a natural human voice? It was like listening to a list being rattled off, not at all easy on the ear.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment once I realised it was going to go straight onto the DELETE pile.

An unnendurable narration...

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