Charles Stross, Missile Gap (Subterranean Press, 2006)
Stross thinks Missile Gap, a novella just under a hundred pages in length which due from Subterranean Press this December, is his creepiest work to date. I disagree -- It is not quite as creepy as his forthcoming novel, Glasshouse, which I am also reading now. Regardless of just how creepy it is, it definitely is a hell of a roller coaster ride of a reading experience!
Now I do caution any of you who covet, errrrr, collect Stross not recommend waiting to order Missile Gap in a few months. This limited edition $35 hardcover, with an ever-so-cool cover and interior illustrations by J.K. Potter, will go fast, as almost every chapbook which Subterranean Press does sells out quite fast. You can order it now directly from Subterranean Press here. While you're doing so, I'll nip down to the Green Man Pub and order us pints of Guinness.
Ahhhh, back already? So now that you have ordered your very own copy, let's discuss this novella. The description on the Subterranean Press web site gives a good taste of what's going on in Missile Gap without really giving anything away:
It's 1976 again. Abba are on the charts, the Cold War is in full swing -- and the Earth is flat. It's been flat ever since the eve of the Cuban war of 1962; and the constellations overhead are all wrong. Beyond the Boreal ocean, strange new continents loom above tropical seas, offering a new start to colonists like newly-weds Maddy and Bob, and the hope of further glory to explorers like ex-cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin: but nobody knows why they exist, and outside the circle of exploration the universe is inexplicably warped.
Gregor, in Washington DC, knows but isn't talking. Colonel-General Gagarin, on a years-long mission to go where New Soviet Man has not gone before, is going to find out. And on the edge of an ancient desert, beneath the aged stars of another galaxy, Maddy is about to come face-to-face with humanity's worst fear. . . .
At first I thought this novella was set in The Atrocity Archives universe, which shares its Cold War paranoia. In that story, the covert intelligence agencies decided to hide the fact that there was a danger, a very nasty danger, to the entire Universe from Really Nasty Beings from Elsewhere. Well, it appears that those Really Nasty Beings from Elsewhere, who or whatever they might be, might have taken the Earth and skinned it like a grape. A very large grape which has been spread over a very large flat disc. Or at least that is what appears to have happened. The two superpowers, the USA and the USSR, have no clue as to what happened. All they know is that they are determined to be the winning superpower. Sort of like ants fighting over a speck of bread..
Now just what is going on is left unresolved by Stross -- make your own guesses as to why and what happened. (I asked him and got the answer I expected, but I'm not telling, so don't bother asking! Besides it would spoil your reading pleasure.) As I said above, it definitely is a hell of a roller coaster ride of a reading experience! He drops just enough clues that you might figure out what happened if you've read his novels, Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise and Accelerando, as it's possible that this is yet another look at the universe(s) depicted in those novels. Or not.
There are some pretty creepy moments here including one that reminded me of the Cthulhu mythos. Or possibly the Pod People. Really. Truly. And the ending was a proper surprise, as I wasn't sure how Stross would wrap it up. Indeed that's the gold standard for good storytelling for me -- interesting characters in a plausible setting (no how farfetched it seems at first glance) with an ending that I wasn't expecting. Bravo Stross!
