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A Colder War  By  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.

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Critic reviews

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

What listeners say about A Colder War

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Good story, Bad narration

The narrator's decision to read this fast and without relaxation makes this a hard to enjoy book (mimics a 1940-50's army/news flick). The story is a nice HP Lovecraft twist, but listen to the sample first before you decide to buy. In fact I've listen to a couple of samples narrated by Pat Bottino and I think his reading style and voice are suitable for only certain characters.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

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.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The best Lovecraft based lore expansion ever written!

Look, it’s really simple. If you’ve read this, then you know. Otherwise, read it. Now! Just select it and read it.
What Stross has done, building atop the Antarctic mission that was the subject of the H.P.L. novella “At the Mountain of Madness”, is establish a fully realized record of the Lovecraftiqn pantheon in the 20th century.
The Nazis, having seized many samples of paranormal material in the aftermath of the early Antarctic expeditions, rapidly pull the threads, unspooling the stitching of the Old Ones and their Shoggoths, Cthulhu, Yog-Soth—you get the point. Before they could bring these “weapons” to bear, WWII ends. Russia, having annexed Numerous Shoggoths, interplanetary gates and Cthulhu himself, begins their half century competition with America under the limitations of the “Dresden Agreement”, a top secret treaty on the use of these strange creatures and objects.
Unfortunately, over the following decades, as tension rises between Warsaw Pact nations and NATO, the Dresden Agreement grows more precarious.
Finally, Ronnie Reagan has arrived! He’s empowered an aggressive young colonel named Ollie North to develops a small team of covert operatives who begin employing the United States’ various capabilities…
What, honestly, could go wrong?
READ IT!!!!

PS-The audio production is phenomenal!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great story, but wooden reader

I loved the story, but the reader was very flat and stilted through out the tale.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Terrible narration

The narrator speaks too quickly and doesn’t annunciate clearly - it comes out as a hard to follow rambling mess.

I can’t give the story a fair rating as I couldn’t begin to follow it.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

My Lord! The narration is appaling!

While the story is alright, showing a alternative cold war, with the added problems the existence of Lovecraft's fabled beings would cause, the narration lacks any pacing.
One sentence leads directly into the next, completely unrelated one, and everything is read as if a gun was held to the narrators head. The characters almost talk on top of one another due to the narrators breathless pace.
if this book had been 3 minutes longer, I would not have finished it. Avoid this version like the plague.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Hated the narration

I hated the narration, it was a rtlly weird mix of robotic voice & monotonicity & overemphasis. :( Couldn't really enjoy the story because of it.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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...

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Cthulhu in the Black Sea?

I thought he was in sunken R'yleh, in the Pacific (see Google Earth coordinates)! I came across a reference to this story in (of all places) a blog about how modern society may be creating a hydrogen sulfide Canfield ocean, prevalent in the Mesoproterozoic, invoking Cthulhu (with name misspelled). The Black Sea is now the poster child for a(n) euxinic body of water, which is where the Soviets dredged him up in this story.

I did not care for the voice changing effects to mark chapter headings (just a personal opinion).

Recommend.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Good continuation

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

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