...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.