Stross's The Atrocity Archives is a fun blend of Jim Butcher's urban fantasy and William Gibson's near future that has some incomplete feeling scene changes and characters, but is generally lighthearted and very well executed. The premises of all the short stories in the collection are absurd in our world but feel completely at home in Stross's London, and you can feel the author's attention to detail in the way he weaves in mathematical and computer science concepts in place of hocus pocus mumbo jumbo words to open portals to other dimensions that works very well.

The one thing I like most about the books, though, is the way that Stross pulls in current events from our world (like public cameras in London, or DRM legislation worldwide) and sheds a different light on them in the context of the world of his characters. ( )

I experienced a rollercoaster of emotions with this book - laughter, pleasure, nausea, terror, delight and psychological horror. I did have some quite bad dreams whilst I was reading it, but there was a lot on my mind at the time, Charles Stross is a very good writer, and there is a quite of a lot of creepy, horrifying, sickening stuff here.

There are many fantastic features here: the Laundry (even enjoyed the name) - the home of national security/intelligence on all things occult, with its office politics, poorly understood support staff, some incompetent management decisions, questionable training policies, and the obsession with correct forms for the correct task; Bob Howard and his colleagues; the idea of joining up mathematical theory and summoning, with hell-raising, hair-raising results; the humour and satire; the techy-speak. Many things about the organisation for which Bob worked sounded familiar, but also had me wanting to watch "Yes, Minister" again. Other reviewers have mentioned Dilbert, and yes there is something of that here.

The sickening, terrifying stuff here is the amalgam of war criminals and the occult, involving some very nasty human sacrifice experiments by some very power-hungry people. It's all strangely believable, and the humour of the rest of the Laundry itself is a necessary leavening that stopped me from abandoning the book altogether (there are some very grim patches). The actual border between fact and fiction in parts of this book got very blurry indeed; elements of real war crimes, trials and codes became something else with the addition of the fantastical, but spotting exactly where that happened became tricky. I left the book glad to have read it, but almost relieved to want to be reaching for history books and newspapers about past or current real events.

I have not picked up a copy of The Jennifer Morgue yet, but I await that with a mix of awe, trepidation and horror. ( )

Stross draws on elements of the Cthulhu mythos and spy thrillers and then he centers upon his own hard-science, cyberpunk geek-ese to create two entertaining stories of Bob Howard and his role in the British occult/intelligence/security organization known as The Laundry. ( )

I'm beginning to run out of credibility when I say I don't do horror. ;-)

The horror in The Atrocity Archives is in places horrific and in places farcical. Not a lot frightens me about the concept of tentacle monsters coming to eat my brains when the stars are right, but some of the descriptions of what human beings will do for that kind of power are truly sickening. Other aspects of the book are extremely funny. Charlie Stross understand the nature of the bureaucrat as well as that of the geek and uses that understanding to great effect. This is a great mash-up of horror, spy novel and science fiction of the geekiest variety, and it is a remarkably enjoyable read.

The book contains the (short) novel The Atrocity Archives and the (I guess) novella (or possibly novelette) The Concrete Jungle.

I'm looking forward to reading the sequel(s).

ETA: I forgot. Bechdel. I reckon it passes both the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, for different reasons. We have Bridget and Harriet talk shop a couple of times. More importantly, we have a variety of female characters, most of whom are shown as competent, intelligent, professional women. One of my favourite scenes is at the end of The Atrocity Archives where Bob goes to see Alan in hospital. The people present are described as a 'nurse and a police officer'. About two pages later, Charlie casually slips in the fact that the nurse is male and the police officer female. Can you honestly tell me that you didn't have those the other way round in your head before it was made explicit? If so, you're a better person than me. ( )

This book was a bit of a slow starter. The characters and world are interesting. The combination of occult and computer science is irresistible. But the core story takes some time to reveal itself. It is worth it in the end. ( )

Fun mix of geek and occult ( )

This is Charles Stross' first novel. And is actually two short stories and a bit of blurb to bring up the word count.
But being Charles Stross it is very good.
It is a story of a secret government organisation that tackles magical threats. But is much more Harry Palmer or Temps than Torchwood or Hellboy. And the clash of ancient evil and office politics is very funny.
Perhaps slightly rough around the edges but it is a first novel and he does improve with every book so I certainly will not hold that against him. ( )

Enjoyable, wanted more ( )

A fun story about civil servant and secret agent Bob Howard who battles bureaucrats and demons from alternate universes arriving through portals opened through advanced computer science, human sacrifice, and runic symbols. Computer scientists and old-style hackers will particularly enjoy the in jokes and references to real computer scientists, such as Alan Turing and Donald Knuth. I enjoyed this much more than Stross's later and more acclaimed work, such as Accelerando. ( )

Secret agent Bob is on the case, but it's not your normal spy mission. No, the secret service Bob works for is called the Laundry and they deal with your atypical bad guys, the one that suck your brains out and make you a zombie.
The two stories contained in this book are a great read especially for us tech heads who like to know there are people out in the real world (or not so) who deal with the same problems you do. As said before this is a fantastic book and well worth the time it take to inhale it. ( )

When reading this book, my face kept breaking out into a big grin. launching from the Church-Turing Theory to summoning Lovecraftian horrors in the space of a single page is a perfect prompt for a geekgasm 8-). Going to have to seek out The Jennifer Morgue now ( )

The ideas and development behind the Stross’ “big idea” technology kept me hooked and were strong enough to make up for what frustrated me. And what frustrated me the most, you ask? I wanted to be smarter than I am. Stross didn’t quite make me feel stupid, but the technology he puts out there is so rooted in possibility (or at least seems to be) that I was forever trying to figure out where exactly his leap from computers to magic originates.

~~full review on my website~~ ( )

A tech-support geek in a (literally) occult government agency begins doing field work. Stross has here a very amusing idea with fantastic elaborations and, dare I say, excellent world-building. Alas, the characterizations and plotting don't hold up nearly as well. Hugo-winning novella "The Concrete Jungle", here tagged on the end of "The Atrocity Archives" proper, thus works quite a bit better for being so much shorter. An amusing read, but not a keeper unless you're collecting the whole of Stross. ( )

Two stories about the same characters. The first story had a great plot and ideas. The hero was fun. The second story wasn't quite as good though. ( )

Okay, here's the general idea behind The Atrocity Archives. Imagine that Alan Turing, the Father of Modern Computer Science, completed his theorem on "Phase Conjugate Grammars for Extra-dimensional Summoning." Suddenly, anyone with an understanding of physics, advanced mathematics and computer science can summon demons and open gates to other dimensions. You'd need a government agency to handle the many crisis situations that would result, right? In the UK, that agency is called the Laundry; staffed by a mix of SAS troops and computer geeks, they are responsible for making sure the worst doesn't happen. Our protagonist is Bob Howard, a "dark-hacker" who is suddenly promoted to active service as a special agent. He quickly finds himself fighting demons, an obscure sect of Nazis who have been hiding out in another dimension since the fall of Berlin and other nastiness (like bureaucratic bosses obsessed with budget expenditures, overtime and requisition forms). The book is a fun combination of urban fantasy, a Men In Black movie and Dilbert. ( )

This collects two early novellas from Stross, "The Atrocity Archive" which recounts the adventures of Bob Howard, computer genius and reluctant spy for The Laundry, a super-secret British agency charged with protecting this universe from incursions from the outer realms. In an ingeniously pulpy plot involving escaped Nazis, modern-day terrorists, and portals into other universes, Howard must keep our universe safe and at the same time save his love interest, Mo, from the clutches of danger. In the second novella, "The Concrete Jungle", secret agent Bob is on the trail of exploding cows (!) that have been attacked with a pan-dimensional weapon. Bureaucratic intrigue and satire are the order of the day here. This is a modern day updating of the pulp adventure stories of the 30's with a serious infusion of computer geek cheekiness. Fans of techno-thrillers with a patience for some lingo-slinging will find a lot to enjoy here. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/996036.htm...

I read this in the wrong order, in a sense, in that it was a couple of years ago that I read the sequel, The Jennifer Morgue (in which I even get a small credit in the acknowledgements). And I had read the second, shorter, section of this book, "The Concrete Jungle", in the run-up to the 2005 Hugo voting (which of course it won). But the first 250 pages, plus Ken MacLeod's introduction, plus Charlie's afterword on the common features of spy and horror fiction, were all new to me.

Having said that, I still like "The Concrete Jungle" best of the Laundry stories. If I had to choose a single word to describe Charlie's writing, I think that word would be "unrestrained". It's not easy to balance that instinctive narrative style with the bathos required to tell stories of civil servants tasked with fighting eldritch horrors from another dimension, and "The Concrete Jungle" is where he succeeds best. Which is not to say that the main chunk of "The Atrocity Archives" is bad, far from it - there are some memorably creepy moments, such as the death of Fred from the accounts department and the exploration of a frozen parallel Earth - it's just that the Hugo voters got it right, as they sometimes do.

And the Ken MacLeod intro and Stross postscript are worth reading too; indeed, the postscript was the only point where I really regretted not having read this before The Jennifer Morgue, as the epilogue to that book seems like a continuation of the same conversation between author and reader. Having said which, this author is one with whom this reader has little difficulty in conversing. ( )

Funny enjoyable hard SF. You've got the office politics, the hacker culture and a nice Stephenson vibe of crazy details. ( )

Dilbert meets Cthulu while channeling Bond ( )

I have had this on my bookshelf for what seems like forever, & after spending this month reading a ton of Chaosium publications, I decided I'd read this one as well. As happens a lot with me, after I finished it I wondered what else on my shelf I've been missing!

What an awesome book! I just ordered the Jennifer Morgue to continue the adventures of Bob Howard & the Laundry; then I'll be bummed because I'm sure it will be a while until the next one. Who should read this? Anyone who likes Lovecraft, spy novels, and enjoys a bit of dark humor (especially at the expense of bureaucracy in government) will truly love this book. I couldn't put it down once I started it.

A synopsis of this book could not do it justice, and besides, there are so many out there on the internet if you go look; so I will just say that there's just enough truth here to make you cringe; indeed, the horror aspect of this book (imho) comes from the realities that are interspersed with the fantastical.

I LOVED this book, and can highly recommend it. I can't help it...I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

Do NOT miss the last section in this book, by any means. ( )

The Atrocity Archives almost beggars description. Mix some H.P. Lovecraft with some Len Deighton (Stross pays an interesting homage to both in an afterword) and some William Gibson and you start coming close.

It's about a British spy agency ("The Laundry") fighting bad guys (including Saddam Hussein and Nazis) with and against monsters, demons and similar creations from alternative universes accessed by magic generated in large part by mathematics and technology. In others words, your traditional horror cyberpunk spy novel. Actually, it's a compilation of a short novel (the title piece) originally serialized in 2000 and 2001 and a sequel novella, The Concrete Jungle, nominated for a 2005 Hugo for Best Novella following its publication in this work.

The Atrocity Archives is certainly innovative and different. I don't know that I could handle a steady diet of it, though.

Originally posted at http://prairieprogressive.com/?p=384

A marvelous conglomeration of computer geekery, horror, and occult geekery. The author makes jokes that I just barely catch, and I'm confident he has others that I missed, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The premise is that there are indeed Lovecraftian things out there, and we are indeed protected by secret government organizations (in this case, a UK one called the "Laundry"), but the process is a very sophisticated combination of the old (a drop of blood) and the new (lasers define the pentagram capture space in which some interdimensional nasty may materialize). Often people are recruited by the Laundry because they accidentally stumble on some mathematical problem that could lead to Something Awful stopping by to eat a city or two (or worse--read the story), which should give you a hint of how things work in this book.

I was very sad when this ended, because I was enjoying it too much to want to stop. Fortunately, there is a sequel (or sequels) and I'm going to have to do some hunting at the library.
If you're a mathematician, a science fiction fan, an occultist (Gods, I hate that word!) or a fan of horror fiction, you should enjoy this.

The style is not unlike Neal Stephenson's in "Zodiac," if that's any help. ( )

A fun combination of Lovecraft monsters, evil nazis, spies, and Yes Minister, with a touch of Snow Crash.

Robert Howard works for 'The Laundry' - the slang name for the spook agency that deals with thaumaturgical, paranormal and invasion by cold, alien intelligences from other universe.

Interesting lengthy essay at the end where Stross talks about the spy novel as horror novel, due to the horrible looming real life threat of nuclear armageddon that was the thread running through a large number of them in recent times.

Entertaining solution for useless paperclip counting backstabbing office politicking bureaucrats, too!

http://superprose.blogspot.com/2007/0... ( )

http://home.earthlink.net/~karen20000... ( )

As you can see from the tags this is a hard to categorise book.

Basically it relies on a couple of premises: maths (and even more so computers) can make connections to demon dimensions and do magic things, and there's a civil service secret group dedicated to protecting us from the worst of it.

There are a lot of nuances that this summary misses though: they're in the best gamekeeper is a former poacher school of thought. Charles Stross has clearly worked in a large bureaucracy, quite possibly the civil service, and he dissects and satirises it from that point of view with unerring, wicked accuracy (at least if you're a brit). There's a fair bit of geek heavy humour in there too.

My only regret: I suspect he hasn't done any more in this style. A great shame. ( )