A Colder War Audiobook By Charles Stross cover art

A Colder War

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A Colder War

By: Charles Stross
Narrated by: Pat Bottino
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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 Alternate History Anthologies & Short Stories Science Fiction Fiction War Emotionally Gripping

Critic reviews

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

Confirms HP Lovecraft's genius...

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

Good continuation

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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

Great Story... Marginal Narration

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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.

Really fun listen

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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.

Horrible Narration

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

Great story, but wooden reader

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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!

The best Lovecraft based lore expansion ever written!

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What did you love best about A Colder War?

I really liked the growing doom as the story went on, the shear scale and vision of the story was incredible.

What did you like best about this story?

Probably the descriptions of strange locations.

Which character – as performed by Pat Bottino – was your favorite?

The Colonel

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

A colder war is coming.

Great stuff

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I believe that this book should be mandatory reading for anyone before they graduate high school or college the inside that it gives on the nature of warfare and espionage and effect on the human population is indispensable .read this.

a must read for any human

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Beautifully rendered, albeit needing more voices. Captured the sense of cosmic dread perfectly. Near perfect, regardless of any minor quibbles

Tonally Perfect

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