Down on the Farm

The short "Down on the Farm" is perhaps the weakest of Stross' Laundry stories I've read, but it's solid fun for all that. It certainly has its moments. The principal faults were redundant exposition for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the earlier stories, and a finish that seemed a little rushed and unenlightening.

A good short story for the Laundry series. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who hasn't already read at least one book in the series. You need to know the background to appreciate it. It has the feel of the early works in the series before stuff happened. So if you're a fan of the earlier books in this series, you'll like this one.

Re-read 2/23/18

I'm upping the stars on this to a full 5 because it means much more to the later novels, especially with the V. :) It's more humorous as a re-read, too. It just gets better and better. Let's go say hi to the old folks on the farm, shall we? Mad magicians, all! :)

Original review:

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: the juxtapositions are delightful. This time we've got a smidge of Doctor Who, a smudge of Cthulhu, spy fiction, and humorous red tape. Second time reading is still just as good as the first.

The Farm is a sanitorium for ex-operatives of The Laundry, a super secret arm of British Intelligence, set up during World War Two to counter the use of 'demonic-computing' by the Nazis. Another in the Laundry series, Bob Howard, the long suffering sysadmin turned sorcerer/spy, is sent to discover who smuggled out a complaint about conditions at the Farm. A somewhat vacant Dr Renfield, the Farm's head, Dalek-like nurses under the control of a possessed antique IBM mainframe and some lunatic inmates doing something that is not chess on a chess board, make for an entertaining encounter with evil.

I’m finding I’m not really a Charles Stross fan. I’ve now listened to two Laundry stories from the podcast, and am 30 installments into Accelerando via DailyLit.com. He writes intelligent, but overly-detailed stories from what I can tell so far. Too much detail. And filled with inside jokes that I just didn’t find funny. In the case of the previous Laundry story and 'Down on the Farm', the joke is that the job of fighting demons from other dimensions falls to a British bureaucracy. So it’s full of references that will be familiar to anyone who has had to deal with a bureaucracy or who has worked in one. Did I say this before? It’s like listening to someone tell you their dream. I’m sure the dream is interesting to them, show more but not as much to anyone else. Same here. It just felt like an excuse to fill in as much of that as possible, at the expense of a real story.

More at: http://reading.kingrat.biz/story-reviews/tor-com-story-podcast-february-2010 show less

Down On The Farm is a short story by Scottish SF author Charlie Stross, available for free on the newly relaunched Tor website. The story stars Bob Howard, computer geek and somewhat reluctant secret agent, who you might remember from Stross's earlier novels The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue - in fact, if you don't remember him, having not read at least one of those books (or the other various short stories in the setting) you might be better not reading this yet, as there's little explicit explanation of the backstory or the mechanics of the universe. Fortunately the earlier stories are easy to get hold of, and I'd definitely recommend them to anybody intrigued by the idea of a world where proving the wrong theorems can show more bridge the gap between this world and one by inhabited by ancient unspeakable brain-devouring Lovecraftian horrors ... and failing to sign the right forms in triplicate before you do can bring down an even worse fate in the form of Human Resources.

For those that are familiar with the setting, there won't be anything too surprising here. But it's a solid effort, and definitely worth the few minutes it will take to read for any fans of the series. show less

Working my way through these these Laundry Files short stories has been a real pleasure. I'm a geek and even though I'm not as smart as Bob Howard, Stross makes me feel like I am.