Missile Gap [Deluxe Edition] [Hardcover]

Charles Stross (Author), J. K. Potter (Illustrator)

Book Description

Release date: December 31, 2006

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???

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this weird little alternative history novella, acclaimed futurist Stross (Glasshouse) takes the familiar clashes of the Cold War and stretches and warps them to fit a flattened Earth where the emergence of new continents incites competitive colonization efforts from the Americans and Soviets. When the colonists encounter 1,000-year-old radioactive ruins and poisonous termite-like creatures that exhibit eerie degrees of intelligence, the true nature of their changed world slowly becomes clear. The result is a blend of 1900s H.G. Wells and 1970s propaganda, updated for the 21st century in the clear, chilly and fashionably cynical style that lets Stross get away with premises that would be absurdly cheesy in anyone else's hands. (Dec.)
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From Booklist

With the dazzling success of his last two novels, including the Hugo-nominated Accelerando (2005), Stross is rapidly establishing himself as one of the preeminent masters of hard sf. Here he takes a breather from weightier fare with a bizarre, nevertheless brilliant alternate-history novella featuring a protracted U.S.-Soviet cold war. The astounding wrinkle in this scenario is that the entire surface of the Earth has been peeled like an orange and, along with other, unknown continents, spread across the surface of an immense disk by mysterious alien forces. Speculation runs rampant among scientists in the U.S and Soviet Union, which has swallowed Europe, as to the how and why of this miraculous transfer, while the rivals encounter further unsettling surprises in their respective pushes to seize new territory. The creatively chosen cast includes a CIA operative named, in homage to Kafka, Gregor Samsa; the late popular astronomer Carl Sagan; and former cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Once again, Stross sets the bar high for his colleagues, should they be feeling competitive, in this mind-bending, intriguing yarn. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 99 pages
• Publisher: Subterranean Press; 1st edition (December 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596060581
• ISBN-13: 978-1596060586
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,566,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars our past is our future... April 19, 2007

By Joe Sherry

The year is now 1973. Just as the Cuban Missile Crisis was heating up something happened. The Earth, once a sphere, is now flat. The balance of power of the Cold War has shifted because the nuclear deterrent of the United States was predicated on being able to launch a missile over the North Pole and then south to Moscow. With the Flat Earth this is impossible and the Communist Soviet Union has spread its power and influence across Europe with only the United Kingdom holding out, but even that is weakening. Democracy has fallen across the flats like dominoes. The world has done more than flatten itself out, however. Sail to the East from Siberia or to the West from California and thousands of miles out there are new continents not populated by humans. The Earth has been changed, or perhaps moved.

In Charles Stross's novella Missile Gap we are introduced to a situation where what appears to be Communist plots and infiltration is far more than what it seems to be, where the manifest destinies of two empires now have new frontiers to expand the worldviews of democracy and socialism, and where there is the very real danger of some sort of alien threat because unknown beings of unimaginable power had to have been the ones to have changed Earth. Stross touches upon a combination of storylines to advance Missile Gap: a political one, and explorations from the Soviets and Americans about what exactly is on these new massive continents. What has really happened to Earth is a shocker and the ramifications go well beyond the political for our future.

Knowing that this novella first appeared in Gardner Dozois's themed anthology One Million A.D. provides a very different mindset for what sort of story Stross is telling than if the reader goes in blind. This vision of an alternate past is actually a vision of the future and though there is a bit of disjointedness as several of the storylines do not truly intersect, the combination of viewpoints provides a broad view of the impact of this world change that would not be possible with a single viewpoint narrative. References to real life political and science figures like Carl Sagan and President (!) Robert McNamara grounds the novel in a sense of reality in this unreal setting. While some readers may be disappointed in the lack of emotional depth or full exploration of the political (or alien) aspects of Missile Gap, this novella shows another part of the true range of Charles Stross as a storyteller as he is able to move between different styles of speculative fiction with ease and tell a masterful story each time. Weighing in at fewer than one hundred pages, Missile Gap is quite the work of creativity.

-Joe Sherry

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars expensive as it's signed and numbered but good yarn February 10, 2007

By C. Little

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a good, knife-twist at the end yarn a la SPIN but darker, more terminally competitive, more like nature than SPIN. It will not wreck your role or genderthink like GLASSHOUSE but give it some room to breath and it's a nice alt-world romp.

And it's expensive because it's a signed by the author, hand-numbered, special edition, for the reviewer before me who dinged it on price. Once it's sold off, it'll be worth more, is how these usually work.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A fun novella... June 8, 2007

By Brett J. Callahan

...but you're sure to be able to get it cheaper in a 'year's best' collection. I enjoyed this book, but if you're hesitant to pay 25-35 dollars for a book you'll likely read in one sitting, wait for it too come out in a year's best. I don't see Gardener Dozois passing on this. The book itself is signed by the author and beautifully bound and designed, which is pretty cool.

The plot: It is the late seventies, and the Soviets and America are waging their cold war on the face of a new earth. Humankind has nearly come to accept the fact that a far superior intelligence has peeled the earth like a grape an flattened it to the top of a disk many times larger than the original planet. Both governments are preparing to fight each other and are expanding their empires, gathering new territories and resources and seeking out new allies.

The characters: Yuri Gagarin has been put in command of a giant nuclear hover-craft/airplane/aircraft carrier thingee and sent forth to find the comrades who have so changed the earth. After all, if a species is so advanced to change the shape of a planet, they must have developed true communism, right?

Maddy has come to the new frontier with her husband Bob, looking to escape her parents and find a new place in the world. After nearly a year on a retrofitted ocean liner, she finds herself in different surroundings, but no closer to happiness. Trained as a nurse, but unable to find employment in her field, she signs on with a scientist and begins to discover that the insects in her new home have some odd tendencies...

Gregor knows a little more about the world's new shape than he is letting on. A US government spook, Gregor heads a thinktank that includes radical scientist Carl Sagan.

Charles Stross gets a lot done in 99 pages. Missile Gap doesn't feel rushed or sketchy, as one might expect from a novella that covers a lot of ground. The plot moves along briskly, the characters are sympathetic, and I found the rather odd ending to be both satisfying and fitting.