The room is ghostly green except for the bright hot spots of powered-down monitors and fans blowing air from hot CPU cases. but once I got my head round the physics jokes and the intelligently bonkers way he mixes alchemy, Cthulu, dungeon dimensions and so many other comfortable notions from science fantasy It turned out to be a rollicking good read. I feel a minor shiver of sympathy coming on: Poor bastard, what must it be like to be stuck here in the warren of cells at the heart of the new industrial revolution, never knowing where the lightning’s going to strike next? I nearly have a heart attack on the spot. Don’t, on pain of your life, step outside the red circle on the floor—we’re on top of an earthed cage here, but if we go outside it—”. [ the ‘bad guys’ appear to be an Islamist extreme group and Nazis. There’s a wooden chair sitting next to it; I pick it up and, gripping the back, use one leg to nudge the handle. And as she will be in the right, appeals to matrix management and conflict resolution won’t save you. Does this book contain inappropriate content? Well, Andy wasn’t the one freezing his butt off in the woods last night, was he? Sigh. Five more minutes of hiding round the back of the QA department of Memetix (UK) Ltd.—subsidiary of a multinational based in Menlo Park, California—then I can do the job and go home. Information can leak between one universe and another. Now he just imitates the Berlin Wall during internal enquiries.) Welcome to the IT department. In other words, it's mean. For added security, you can superimpose the attractor node and the safety cell, locking in the summoned agency—which means they shouldn’t be able to get to us at the antinode. I wasn't sure if I'd like this book or not, but I did end up enjoying it. (One-time passwords are a bitch to crack; once again, give thanks to the Laundry’s little helpers.) I think this was during one of his rare fits of sanity. . “Metaphorically or sexually?”, An expression of deep puzzlement flits across Fred’s face. “I was having a shit,” he says. Last time I got mail from him it turned out he’d reinstalled an earlier version of some critical bits ‘n’ pieces over his hard disk, trashing everything, and had the effrontery to be mailing virus-infested jokes around the place. The book’s blurb actually sounded interesting – though it certainly helped my enjoyment to believe that the character of Bob Howard looks exactly like Fenris, if Fenris happened to be moonlighting as a snarky IT guy who works for The Laundry. Nonetheless, I soldier on. Just in case you’ve forgotten, this current is carrying fifteen amps at six hundred volts, and the baseboard is insulated and oriented correctly along a north-south magnetic axis. I try not to groan. I finally read a Charles Stross novel that didn't leave me feeling vaguely disappointed that I didn't enjoy it more! He's an IT guy who has been working for the Laundry for a few years - underpaid, shares a house in London with a couple of mad scientists, and looking to break into Field Ops out of sheer boredom. I figure I can make it into the Laundry by eleven and still have time to wake up first. The only snag is I am somewhat ambivalent about his fiction. Imagine a world where speaking or writing words can literally and directly make things happen, where getting one of those words wrong can wreak unbelievable havoc, but where with the right spell you can summon immensely powerful agencies to work your will. Five more minutes spent hiding in the bushes down on an industrial estate where the white heat of technology keeps the lights burning far into the night, in a place where the nameless horrors don’t suck your brains out and throw you to the Human Resources department—unless you show a deficit in the third quarter, or forget to make a blood sacrifice before the altar of Total Quality Management. Of the two stories, "The Atrocity Archive" is probably the better (I had trouble putting it down). All I have to do is avoid the security guard and I’m home free. Every so often I come across a book so laden with obscure references that only my own particular predisposition to trivia sees me through to the other side. I don’t ask how they know that, I’m just grateful that there’s only five more minutes of standing here among the waterlogged trees, trying not to stamp my feet too loudly, wondering what I’m going to say if the local snouts come calling. Its basic premise is that mathematics can be magic. Because Security is staffed by things that you really don’t want to get mad at you—in fact, you don’t even want them to notice you exist. But, yes. For all the many words that densely saturate the page, he doesn’t quite manage to properly describe the setting or situation, so the reader is often left wondering where exactly the characters are and what is going on. In "Atrocity," Bob, a low-level computer fix-it guy for the Laundry, a supersecret British agency that defends the world from occult happenings, finds himself promoted to fieldwork after he bravely saves the day during a routine demonstration gone awry. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Add to Wish List. You stand in one of ’em, energize the circuit, and something appears at the other. Are you falling asleep back there? Winchester Road Crematorium) and you don’t need to be a necromancer to figure out what that means. Somewhere in that building the last late-working executive is yawning and reaching for the door remote of his BMW. You put the corresponding antinode at point B. “He duplicated the Turing result?”, Harriet nods. “Well, you should have phoned in first,” she says waspishly. Three authors in particular made it possible for me to imagine this book and I salute you, H. P. Lovecraft, Neal Stephenson, and Len Deighton. His world was dull and safe - but then he went and got Noticed. I often find it hard to distinguish the real and the imagined terms among them. It might be called the Civil Service but nothing says it has to be civil... but if you don't think it has an important service to offer, woe is ye. Welcome back. Andy stubs out his cigarette and sits up. Do you believe that this item violates a copyright? Lights glow beneath it, set in a baseboard made of timber harvested from a (used) gallows; setup is everything. . It dawned on me that the guy who was writing sensible-but-radical posts to various newsgroups I hung out in was the same Charles Stross who’d written two or three short stories I’d enjoyed in the British SF magazine Interzone: “Yellow Snow,” “Ship of Fools,” and “Dechlorinating the Moderator” (all now available in his collection TOAST, Cosmos Books, 2002). “What in? And by then, the imp of perversity is chuckling up his sleeve. Please try your request again later. I can’t even bring myself to read my mail until I’ve had a good five minutes staring at nothing in particular. Not, in this case, because the words are gory, but because the history is all too real. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The imp of perversity takes over: I bang out a quick command, mailing the incriminating file to a not-so-dead personal account. One flows to the next, separated by only a month or two of story time. Green sky at night; hacker's delight. A yellowing dog-eared poster on the wall reminds us that CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES—it might be indicative of a sardonic institutional sense of humour but I wouldn’t bet on it. Dangling links are potent sources of noise in the circuit, and you need to stick a capacitor on the end to drain it and prevent echoes; sort of like a computer’s SCSI bus, or a local area network. Does this book contain quality or formatting issues? I yank up on the toilet handle instead of down, and the back wall opens like a big thick door (plumbing and all), ushering me into the vestibule. He comes up with some great ideas and is quite popular within his chosen genre. So, I'd recommend reading through the "Look Inside" stuff on Amazon's product page before pulling the trigger on this. In Charles Stross's novel The Atrocity Archive and its sequels, the "Laundry" is a secret British agency responsible for keeping dark interdimensional entitities from … (Or worse, but that’s another kind of problem, one the coworkers in Field Ops get to handle.). Nameless dread is all very well when you’re slumped in front of the TV watching a slasher movie, but it plays havoc with your stomach when you drop half a pint of incredibly strong black coffee on it in the space of fifteen minutes. “Anyway, it’s time to break for coffee. As in any good horror story, there are moments when you cannot believe that anyone would dare put on paper the words you are reading. There’s a red light showing so I knock and wave my badge before entering, just in case Security is paying attention. In. “Go have a word with Dr. Vohlman,” I suggest, and—a trifle rudely—turn away. . In American terms, it’s a black operation. “Circuit two.” A button is depressed. The latter won the Hugo for best novella. The Atrocity Archives (A Laundry Files Novel #1) (Paperback) By Charles Stross. There’s an ominous smell of ozone . I’m alone in the house; everyone else is either out—working—or out—gone for good. I SLINK BACK TO MY OFFICE VIA THE COFFEE maker, from which I remove a mug full of a vile and turgid brew that coats my back teeth in slimy grit. . The first novel in Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross's witty Laundry Files series. The Jennifer Morgue (Laundry Files Book 2), The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files Book 3), The Apocalypse Codex (Laundry Files Book 4), The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files Book 6), The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files Book 7), Dead Lies Dreaming (Laundry Files Book 10), The Delirium Brief: A Laundry Files Novel, “Like his peer Cory Doctorow, Stross has an ironic Generation X sensibility, conditioned, in his case, by time spent in the simultaneously thrilling and boring world of information technology. The only reason I didn't give it 4 stars was there was too much technical jargon that I didn't understand. In one of the desk drawers something’s died and gone to meet its maker. My husband was seriously annoyed when I had to stay up to finish it at 2 in the morning. That one, Burn Time, the first of his novels I read, remains unpublished—great concept, shaky execution—but the raw talent was there and so was the energy and application and the astonishing range of reference. No one answered that question for me and as time went by I figured out that most of us mere humans go to the grave having never used trigonometry in real life. His world was dull and safe - but then he went and got Noticed. This has several consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms—translation: all your bank account are belong to us—and ending with the ability to computationally generate a Dho-Nha geometry curve in real time. In The Atrocity Archives, Stross’s genius lies in devoting fully as much time to the bureaucratic shenanigans of the Laundry as he does to its thaumaturgic mission.” – The Washington Post Book World No? Am I making myself clear?”, I sit down again. I like his blogs, I like his personality and honesty (in so far as one can gauge such things based on the author's writings, interviews and such). In the case of the great circuit of Al-Hazred, the terminator was originally a black goat, sacrificed at midnight with a silver knife touched only by virgins, but these days we just use a fifty microfarad capacitor. Who wrote this synopsis? No motion-triggered security lights flash on. Downstairs in the kitchen I fill a percolator with nuclear-caffeinated grounds and nudge it onto the gas ring. Is there anything else?”, “Probably not,” he murmurs, standing. Omnibus Title: The Atrocity Archives • [Laundry Files] • (2004) • omnibus by Charles Stross Contents (view Concise Listing) xi • Introduction: Charlie's Demons • (2004) • essay by Ken MacLeod; 1 • The Atrocity Archive • [Laundry Files • 1] • (2001) • novel by Charles Stross January 2006 Gone are the days of the impromptu black-bag job . Impresses the brass no end. The story follows computer scientist Bob Howard into a job he has fallen into, in a top-secret British intelligence service. Andy taps his fingers on the desk. The big “gotcha” is that a human observer is required—you can’t do it by remote control. “Next on the agenda,” says Andy. I had some issues with "The Concrete Jungle" (the mathematical basis of zombies, shrunken heads, and geases isn't explained), but that can be excused because of its shortness. The Atrocity Archives is the first volume in Charles Stross’s Laundry Files series. Authors write, but not in a vacuum. If you still have a head.”. . “Right, better put your coffee cups down now, because we’re going to actually put some of the stuff we were discussing before break into practice.”, Vohlman is all business, attacking his curriculum with the gusto of a born schoolteacher. This was simultaneously the Laundry’s first ever success and greatest ever disaster: to be honest, they overreacted disgracefully and managed to deprive themselves of one of the finest minds at the same time. Now I’ve got a sick Beowulf cluster to resurrect before Friday’s batch PGP cluster-fuck kicks off. Please try again. The cellar door is ajar and the light’s on and the noise is coming from down below; I grab the fire extinguisher and advance. Starting from an absolutely brilliant premise -- that there's a point where higher mathematics and Lovecraftian monsters meet, and computer hackers are as likely to tap into that realm as sorcerors -- Charles Stross digs deep into the bureaucracy of intelligence operations to come up with one of the niftiest plotlines about left-over Nazi occultism ever. This latter item is just slightly less dangerous than allowing nerds with laptops to wave a magic wand and turn them into hydrogen bombs at will. “Yes,” I said. The loneliness of the long-distance spook? Sensitive readers may be offended by some of the interpretations Stross gives to the Third Reich's activities, but other than that this is an e. Starting from an absolutely brilliant premise -- that there's a point where higher mathematics and Lovecraftian monsters meet, and computer hackers are as likely to tap into that realm as sorcerors -- Charles Stross digs deep into the bureaucracy of intelligence operations to come up with one of the niftiest plotlines about left-over Nazi occultism ever. To start with there’s a charming piece of email from Mhari, laundered through one of my dead-letter drops. 4.0 to 4.5 stars. Spy Thriller, Lovecraftian Horror, and Science Fiction. No references to Dee or the others, apart from a couple of minor arcana on his bookshelf. (That’s out, as in working, for Pinky and the Brain; out, as in fucked off, for Mhari.) The Atrocity Archives is first in currently seven book series–for those of you looking to sink your reading chops into an established series–that feature Robert Howard, computer programmer and now employee of Her Majesty’s Secret Supernatural Service. I just need a little more HEA in 2020 and these are a bit too Chthulu to ever feel the good guys will win in the end without losing a bit of their soul in the process. I loved the characters-I really wanted to know more about Pinky and Brains and Mo clearly has more to say. The premise is that Turing cracked the NP-Completeness theorem back in the forties! The pager vibrates again. Dumping the chair, I yank the pin from the extinguisher and open fire, remembering to stand well clear of those big capacitors. Bob found his way into the top-secret government organization when he did something precocious with a computer, and now he’s facing the unusual dilemma of being a stipend collecting desk-warmer or stepping into the dangerous supernatural spy business. I really should find nerdier friends. IT’S THE AFTERNOON OF DAY TWO OF THE TRAINING course Andy sent me on, and I have just about hit my boredom threshold. The Laundry is dedicated to saving the world one day at a time from eldritch horrors who threaten to blot out the sun, and also to maintaining Total Quality Management and keeping Parliament from cutting back on their office supply budget. I know there’s always one person who’s in the wrong course, but we’re two days in and he still hasn’t figured it out—that’s got to be some kind of record, hasn’t it? “No!” squeaks Babs, realising it’s too late to stop him even as she speaks. Vohlman—has rolled an archaic test bench in; it looks like a couple of Tesla coils fucking a Wheatstone bridge next to what I’ll swear is a distributor hub nicked from an old Morris Minor. It’s eleven at night and there are still lights burning in the cubicle hive: Don’t these people have a bed to go home to? I type so fast my fingers trip over each other. “Had a good sleep, did we?”, I pull out a chair and slump into it. He or she has handlers and superiors, many of whom don’t know what really goes on at the sharp end. ’Course I’m sure. (Andy, who I think understands how I tick, keeps quiet. Over in the States, when they’re not dangling stupid “remote viewing” disinformation tricks in front of the press corps the Black Chamber is busy running experiments on the big Nova laser at Los Alamos that everyone thinks is for bomb research. Not that I blindly listen to an audiobook just because I want to hear sexy sweet nothings in my ear all day. He is sent to Santa Cruz, California to help out a professor at UCSC - a British national who isn't being allowed to leave the States, courtesy of the Dark Chamber (the US answer to the Laundry). It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. “Can I borrow your laser pointer?”. I hover near the back. Not many people know that there’s precisely one public toilet in Mornington Crescent station. I’m lurking in the shrubbery behind an industrial unit, armed with a clipboard, a pager, and a pair of bulbous night-vision goggles that drench the scenery in ghastly emerald tones. The stack contains a cable decoder, satellite dish, Sony Playstation, and a homemade web TV receiver that Brains threw together during a bored half hour. Bob, I’d like a word with you after the meeting, about timekeeping.”, “Anything else? Manesh, if you could switch on the ABSOLUTELY NO ENTRY sign . Apart from its intrinsic fun, the story conveys the peculiar melancholy of looking back on a con and realising that no matter how much of a good time you had, there was even more that you missed. Boris just sits there, being Boris. Bob gets called on the carpet by his bosses because he requested backup during an emergency without first getting his supervisor's okay and filling out the requisite forms. Babs, blonde bubble-and-squeak with big-framed spectacles, is treating the bench like an unexploded bomb; I think she’s new to this and still too much under the influence of The Exorcist, probably expects heads to start spinning round and green slime to start spewing at any moment. He has no demons. Nah. This, the first book in the Laundry Files series, is an interesting mixture of genres told from the point of view of Bob Howard. “Never mind.” She taps her papers into a neat stack. Golden Gryphon $24.95 (295p) ISBN 978-1-930846-25-8. But I might get serious about that overtime claim if it happens too regularly. The Atrocity Archives (Book) : Stross, Charles : Computer science guru Alan Turning paves the way for esoteric mathematical computations that Nazi Germany uses to perform a summoning, bringing an unexpected evil to Earth through a portal to an alternate universe. Fred is already lost and the last thing you do to someone who’s in contact with high tension is grab them to pull them away—that is, if you do it, it’s the last thing you’ll ever do. The worst thing about this book is the wasted potential. so there's all sorts of nerds in the world, right? Though the characters all tend to sound the same, and Stross resorts to lengthy summary explanations to dispel confusion, the world he creates is wonderful fun. Try this and get the termination wrong and you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face—because your face will be on the other side of your head. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. then I proceeded to describe what each of those goddesses overs. “Not a lot more to say, really.”, “The security guard was fully aware there was going to be a burglary, Bob. I’ve been over this before with Brains; electrical great circles are a bad thing, best shunned by anyone with easy access to decent quality lasers and a stabilised platform. It’s inconveniently high up, a good four feet above the concrete gutter. Electricity, for ages the primary tool of the experimental vitalists, is now pretty much obsolete—but it’s so well-understood that these ivory-tower types prefer to use it as a vehicle for their research, rather than trying more modern geometry engines based on light, which doesn’t have any of the nasty side effects of electrical invocations. THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES Charles Stross, Author, Ken MacLeod, Introduction by. "THE ATROCITY ARCHIVE" IS A SCIENCE FICTION novel. At least the heating’s on. Thus far, Stross isn't succeeding in my view. The bloody things make me look like a train-spotter with a gas-mask fetish, and wearing them is giving me a headache. It felt a little less light-hearted when Nazis and the occult were woven into the plot. I lean back and stare up at the slowly roiling smoke-dragons that curl under the fluorescent tubes. Cuts too close to the bone. “Yo,” I say. I nearly jump right out of my skin as I turn round. I’m no James Bond, with a sexy KGB minx trying to seduce me in every hotel room. I’ll write this up and point it at the Board. Because, you see, everything you know about the way this universe works is correct—except for the little problem that this isn’t the only universe we have to worry about. Section Three has all kinds of juicy hidden provisions to make life easy for spooks like us; it’s a bureaucratic cloaking field. “Dr. Strange structure, and way too much technical jargon, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 19, 2018. The photocopier hulks like an altar beneath a wall covered with devotional scriptures—the company’s code of conduct, lists of compulsory employee self-actualization training courses, that sort of thing. The Atrocity Archives makes entertaining reading. This means that the people who broke them in the first place keep calling me back in, and blame me whenever they make things go wrong again. The storytelling is poor, with swathes of information/ideas regularly dumped on the reader, a lot of which is only obliquely relevant. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 21, 2018. It fits with what we’re hearing from the other witnesses.”, Andy looks away. Anyway, I’ve suffered for my knowledge, and here’s what I’ve learned. The Atrocity Archives Book descriptions The father of modern computer science, Alan Turning paves the way for esoteric mathematical computations that, when used by Nazi Germany's Ahnenerbe-SS to perform a summoning, results in an unexpected evil brought to Earth through a … While I’m cursing, Fred somehow ends up standing behind my left shoulder. Whatever then walked the Earth would not be life, let alone human. Yes, I imagine a lot of people find his writing clear as a bell, I can only speak for myself. . You slimy scumbag, don’t you ever show your nose round my place again. .”, WE ARE NOT ALONE, THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE, yadda yadda yadda. Bob Howard is a … But Harriet’s under a lot of pressure; she’s got a lot of projects on her plate and the last thing she needs is to be kept waiting two hours because you couldn’t be bothered to leave a message on her voice mail last night.”, Putting it that way, I begin to feel like a shit—even though I can see how I’m being manipulated. Just try to remember that Croxley Industrial Estate isn’t Novaya Zemlya, and getting your head kicked in isn’t going to save the world from the forces of evil.”). I’ve been waiting out here in the bushes for three hours so far, waiting for the last workaholic to turn the lights out and go home so that I can climb in through a rear window.
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