PREFACE
Sean Patrick Hazlett
I grew up during the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear Armageddon loomed over the globe like a metaphorical Sword of Damocles. The world was a bipolar one then, in which leaders and pundits gauged every geopolitical turn from the perspective of whether it advantaged the United States or the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of US troops were stationed with their NATO allies in West Germany, poised to protect the Free World should Red Army and Warsaw Pact tanks ever advance through the Fulda Gap. Tens of thousands of US soldiers hunkered down along the DMZ on the Korean peninsula, ready for an invasion by a North Korean Soviet client state. The CIA ran clandestine and covert operations to thwart its KGB nemesis in locales as varied as Cambodia, Cuba, Angola, Afghanistan, Iran, and many, many other global hotspots.
And then there was the stranger or weird side of the Cold War—secret projects on mind control, remote viewing, and the investigation of unidentified flying objects. The US government ran a slew of actual projects such as MKUltra, Sun Streak, Grill Flame, Stargate, and Blue Book that explored these strange phenomena as the arms race extended toward increasingly esoteric ways of waging war. This anthology explores those areas and much, much more. It is a love letter to a bygone era, when the world was simpler, but the stakes were existential—where one errant signal could unleash the dominos of mass destruction.
What if the United States had gone to war with the Soviet Union? What if they had fought on land, sea, air, and the astral plane? What if alien technology had fallen into the hands of one of these rival superpowers? What if the Soviets and Americans had struggled for dominion across parallel dimensions? What if they had summoned demons to gain decisive advantage? What if these two global adversaries could transcend both space and time? How would the world have changed? What wonders could have been unveiled? What terrors could have haunted mankind from those dark and dismal dimensions?
Come closer, peer through a glass darkly, and discover the horrifying visions of World War III from some of today’s greatest minds in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.