A Colder War
| "A Colder War" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Charles Stross | |
| Genre(s) | Alternate history Cthulhu Mythos |
| Publication | |
| Published in | Spectrum SF No. 3 |
| Publication date | July 2000 |
"A Colder War" is an alternate history novelette by Charles Stross written c. 1997 and originally published in 2000.[1] The story fuses the Cold War and the Cthulhu Mythos.
The story is set in the early 1980s and explores the consequences of the Pabodie expedition in
It was one of
Publication history
The story originally appeared in
Plot synopsis
The main viewpoint character, Roger Jourgensen, is a CIA analyst who writes up a report on the state of both the U.S. and Soviet governments' occult research for incoming President Ronald Reagan. This report attracts the attention of "the Colonel" (later named as "Colonel North"; implied to be Oliver North), who arranges for Jourgensen's transfer and for him to work on a variant of the Iran–Contra affair: secret dealings between the U.S. and Iran to counter Saddam Hussein's Iraq, frustrate the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, as well as arrange the freeing of hostages in Lebanon.
In this
While the committee is in session, Saddam manages to stabilise the gate of
References
- ^ "Interview – Charlie's Diary". Antipope.org. 27 August 2010. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
- ^ "Stross has admitted 'A Colder War' is directly inspired by Lovecraft's novel 'At The Mountains of Madness'." --"Review of A Colder War by Charles Stross", SFFaudio
- ^ "Back in 1997 when I began to explore this area, I started with a novelette titled "A Colder War", which made it pretty explicit. ACW was set in the future of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" – a future in which Nazi Germany, the USSR, and the USA had all found their uses for the ancient alien technologies found by the Pabodie expedition to Antarctica. It all ends in tears (and a fate worse than global thermonuclear annihilation – the point of that story was to inject some horror back into Lovecraftiana by linking it implicitly to something truly horrifying, to anyone who grew up during the Cold War), but not before a Senator in a congressional hearing gets to utter the words, “Mister President, we cannot allow a Shoggoth Gap to emerge.”" "Ian Tregillis in conversation with Charlie Stross on The Laundry Files"
- ^ "The online story "A Colder War" is *not* part of the Bob Howard/Laundry series, but is an earlier short story along a similar vein, but far more serious (and deadly); there is no humor at all in this shorter story." From Marty Halper Archived 26 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Stross' editor on the relevant stories
- ^ Teresa at * 34 comments (25 September 2004). "Making Light: More on the Lovecraftian far right". Nielsenhayden.com. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "Locus Online: 2000 Recommended Reading List". Locusmag.com. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
- ^ "Lockhart, Ross E. – The Book of Cthulhu". Night Shade Books. Archived from the original on 23 August 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
- ^ "New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird edited by Paula Guran". Prime Books. Archived from the original on 7 October 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2011.
External links
- "A Colder War", story online at Infinity-Plus
- A Colder War title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Nuking Them From Orbit May Not Help: Charlie Stross’s “A Colder War”