In this collection of short stories, novelist Stross moves the U.S.-U.S.S.R. conflict onto a massive disk in another galaxy in "Missile Gap," offers a spam-filter solution to the Fermi paradox in "MAXOS," suggests clever bargains with the devil in a newly frozen Scotland in "Snowball's Chance," and sets the stage for appearances by Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould in "The Colder War."
