The Cool War

Far from a new book, I just now caught up with reading Frederick Pohl’s “The Cool War” that he wrote in 1979.

The book follows the Reverend Hornswell Hake, who most of his acquaintances call “Horny”. He’s the pastor of a small church in Long Branch, New Jersey in a world where energy production and usage is quite a lot different.

For background, at some point some years before the book takes place, the Israelis nuked all the Arab oil fields as a way to reduce their power and worldwide influence. So, Hake’s world is powered by a lot of coal, some minimal oil, some solar, and it’s a lot more polluted than our world now.

Pohl’s characterization of Hake felt a lot more like sci-fi authors from the 50’s than from the late show more 70’s. Hake, and since it’s from his perspective, the reader, goes through most of the novel without much clue what’s going on.

As a reader, I felt more like I was stuck in the head of an idiot. At many points in the story I kept thinking he could’ve clarified a lot by asking some questions of others, but he never did and I felt dissatisfied.

Some of the espionage acts were interesting and some made me want more detail on what Hake’s associates were doing. But he was too stupid to ask the questions I wanted answered.

Overall, it was not a very good book. And even worse by late 70’s sci-fi literature standards than earlier. show less

I got a pristine hardback copy of this in the 1990s for 3 dollars because it was in some cut-out bin at a used book shop that I liked. I recall enjoying it a lot. It's an amusing take on cold war, with some fun ideas. But, alas, I read it so long ago that I can't vouch for it much in terms of style or what have you, except that I do remember the episodes made me chuckle.

Interesting ideas about the future of warfare (economic sabotage), but annoying characters/plot developments weaken the story.

Dated, stilted characters