The Cold War - films, games and reading

Yesterday, November 9th marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Cold War allowed artists to explore new ideas in storytelling, as the world around them began to take darker shades of gray, so too were the stories. Countless dreamers around the world tried to keep the looming thought of nuclear proliferation away, while others forced you to live it through their work. There are many classic titles from this era, books and films that are essential reading in everyone's collection. Today I'm going to share a few that have been on my mind this past weekend. 

Kurt Vonnegut will always be known and remembered for his masterpiece Slaughterhouse 5, but it is Cat's Cradle that I want to briefly mention here. Here Vonnegut uses satire and black humor to reveal the stupidity of America's scientific/military/religious bureaucracy that had brought the world to the brink of extermination in the early 1960s. 

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett is a grim dark view into what might have been. Set two geneations after the total annihilation of civilization humanity begins to rebuild in scattered small towns. Brackett paints a paranoid and fearful world where cities and science has become a taboo idea and even outlawed, and the most dangerous thing is the thirst for knowledge. 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its numerous film adaptations is classic American Cold War pseudo propaganda at its best, or perhaps worst. A grim plot has been set in motion by unseen forces to infiltrate a small town and turn all its citizens into blind, submissive beings of hive mind horror! With a metaphore so thinly veiled it borders on camp, be sure to revisit this timecapsule of sheer delight on either book or film. 

Games are my specialty so I had to squeeze at least one on this list today. In Twilight Struggle, players compete for political dominion of the world as either the USSR or USA. The game simulates early, mid, and late stages of the war. The game brilliantly captures the feeling of each player playing as a tyrant, balancing influence in the face of nuclear war in order to race for arms and technology. We can read about history, but why I love Twilight Struggle is it asks you to actively participate in it, the decisions and choices between economic suffering, civil unrest, power, influence, are all yours to make. 

And finally, Lavie Tidhar's Violent Century is a novel that I have not read, but last week when I mentioned the Cold War to a colleague of mine, the wonderful Glenn from our Göteborgsbutik, he insisted that I had to mention this one. To quote Io9: "World Fantasy Award-winning author Lavie Tidhar has already gone to some dark, strange places - but in The Violent Century, his brilliant Cold War epic, he does the closest thing we've seen to Alan Moore's Watchmen in book form. And along the way, he questions what it means to be a hero." I'm sold already, and have preordered my copy, I suggest you do the same. 

Andres