A Colder War by Charles Stross.
Discussion prompt: IIRC we've hit a couple Cold War-based stories in the past. Would you say that this one is using the Cold War as a setting to make a statement about that era in any way?
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I’m a sucker for sci-fi unknown phenomenon investigation, and combining that with the Cold War intrigue was a nice touch for the appeal of the piece. I was definitely left with a sense of wanting more exploration into the world, so maybe I’ll have to look into the author’s series that has a similar setting.
It’s pretty common to see Cold War fiction sending a “look what destruction we would bring on ourselves” message. Also not the first one I’ve seen mentioning this as an answer to the Fermi paradox (see Fermi and Frost).