Charles Stross on "A Colder War" and More

Charles Stross, who penned the notable Cthulhu Mythos tale, "A Colder War," has recently posted a blog article shedding new light on this story's inception and its meaning. As most readers have long suspected, Stross sought to strain the paranoia, anxiety, and outright terror of the Cold War into a concentrate through the filter of H.P. Lovecraft's universe. Though its premise is borderline pulpy on the surface--an "alternative" imagining of the Cold War incorporating a secretive military-industrial complex (from both the US and the USSR) wrangling with Lovecraftian horrors--the piece has stood out since its original publication as an imaginative and well liked example of modern Yog-Sothery. Stross ruminates briefly on Stanley Kubrick's infamous "Dr. Strangelove" as well, a curious cocktail of fear and humor, not unlike Stross' own Cold War work.

One might wonder if Stross' tale represents a natural outgrowth of political Lovecraftiana not commonly touched on. While blatant political opinions were usually absent in the stories of HPL (aside from aberrations like "The Street," which explored radical anarcho-Marxist subversion from within using a rather conservative perspective), his forward-looking concepts in science readily yield themselves to political fiction. The god-like Azathoth was always described as a swirling chaos of nuclear power--presumably the most powerful and menacing "consciousness" in the universe, however "blind" and "idiotic." With the explosion of controversy around the arms race long after Lovecraft's death, political stories focusing on nuclear issues were inevitable.

In a geopolitical realm laced with its own strung out terrors beginning in the Cold War era, and even renewed clashes between the US and Russia, Stross' work may gain further interest from Cthulhu Mythos fans. It may even inspire new Cthulhu Mythos tales from the Terror War, or perhaps a future reality based Colder War between East and West. Stross' expanded novella can be read here at Infinity Plus.

-Grim Blogger