And now for something completely different.
So, not content with far future Science Fiction, and Fantasy of the It's-Really-SF variety, Charles Stross has also produced a could-be-happening-now SF-Horror-Spy novel, The Atrocity Archives. You could even call it a supernatural thriller if you fancy categorisation by the latest publishing industry genre-de-jour. Or perhaps it's best just to give up on the categories completely.
The UK paperback edition of The Atrocity Archives, published by Orbit, contains a foreword by Ken McLeod, The Atrocity Archives novel, the Hugo winning novella The Concrete Jungle and a lengthy, fascinating, afterword by Mr. Stross discussing the book and it's influences.
From the start the story is fun. It's set in what has become known as The Laundryverse. The Laundry is a fictional secret British Intelligence service, which looks after the Occult side of things (as you do). The modern day setting and geek hero Bob seem to suit Stross, details of bureaucratic offices and downtrodden IT guys seem oh so real (especially if you have worked in/as either), and blackly funny. There's a wit running through the book that appealed to me: the fact that demons from other dimensions can be summoned by some hard maths; The Laundry with it's matrix management, dodgy IT infrastructure and occult weapons cache; the accurate descriptions of sharing a house with geeks. I chuckled quite a bit.
Both The Atrocity Archives and The Concrete Jungle have spy-thriller plots, with other stuff chucked in. The Atrocity Archives has a slower start, due to the setup, both of situation and character, but escalates to a wild climax. The Concrete Jungle dives in and gets straight up to speed immediately, thanks in part to the setup being dealt with previously. Interestingly this means that any other sequels should benefit from this too, like The Jennifer Morgue, which is the next book in the universe. Both stories have that "I'll just read a couple more pages" factor, just like Glasshouse, that meant I hardly put the book down. Although sometimes I long for a touch more poetic language in Stross's books he definitely seems to have cracked the art of crafting a cracking plot.
This is the book to attract the (now almost legendary) non-SF Slashdot geek crowd, the book that horror, thriller, spy fans should read. Forget the Ludlum knock-offs that aren't Ludlum anymore, read this. And for SF fans there's parallel universes, crazy maths and big scary monsters. Great fun.
The Atrocity Archives is a book I can envisage as a classy BBC TV series: take the budget from Spooks (never been the same since series two) and the team from Life On Mars, mix together and voila. In fact, commission Charlie to write new, original episodes! (Anyone from the Beeb reading?)
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