Pyramid Review
Cold Space
Published by Flying Mice Games
Written by Clash Bowley & Albert Bailey
Illustrated by Clash Bowley
178-page b&w softcover; $21.99
186-page full-color PDF; $10At its heart, Cold Space explores a simple question: "What would happen if interplanetary -- then interstellar, travel became possible at the dawn of the Cold War?" In answering this, what Cold Space does is present an age, beginning in 1949 and ending in 1989, the beginning and the end of the Cold War, altered by the discovery of the contra-gravity drive. Adopted not only by the superpowers of the USA and the USSR, but by many other nations, this device not only enabled them to establish colonies first throughout the Solar System, and then beyond. By the 1960s interstellar travel was cheap, and getting to the Moon was as easy as taking a bus. Yet as mankind spread to the stars, it carried his politics with him. The worlds within and beyond the Solar System become a broader battleground for the dark nasty wars of propaganda and proxy fought between East and West, red and blue, Stars 'n' Stripes and Hammer and Sickle.
The new technology dominated this battleground. At first quite literally, with anti-gravity gunships dominating the skies above Korea, and later, Vietnam. But the Swiss team developing the new physics theorized that it could be used to lift bodies beyond the Earth. The USA adapted one of the first nuclear submarines, intending to get her to the Moon. This became a race when the Soviets . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 14, 2007
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