The Atrocity Archives

Zusatztext “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. 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 “Much of the action is completely nuts! but Stross manages to ground it in believability through his protagonist’s deadpan reactions to both insane office politics and supernatural mayhem.” – San Francisco Chronicle “If this keeps up! ‘Strossian’ is going to become a sci-fi adjective…Charles Stross writes with intelligence and enjoys lifting the rock to show you what’s crawling underneath…The clever results will bring a smile to your face.” – The Kansas City Star “It’s science fiction’s most pleasant surprise of the year.” – San Francisco Chronicle Informationen zum Autor Charles Stross Klappentext Charles Stross takes a departure from his epic science fiction to craft this cross between Len Deighton-style espionage and H.P. Lovecraftian horror. Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic. But somehow, he is... ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Authors write, but not in a vacuum. Firstly, I owe a debt of gratitude to the usual suspects—members of my local writers workshop all—who suffered through first-draft reading hell and pointed out numerous headaches that needed fixing. Paul Fraser of Spectrum SF applied far more editorial muscle than I had any right to expect, in preparation for the original magazine serialization; likewise Marty Halpern of Golden Gryphon Press, who made this longer edition possible. Finally, I stand on the shoulders of giants. 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. Introduction CHARLIE’S DEMONS “THE ATROCITY ARCHIVE” IS A SCIENCE FICTION novel. Its form is that of a horror thriller with lots of laughs, some of them uneasy. Its basic premise is that mathematics can be magic. Its lesser premise is that if the world contains things that (as Pratchett puts it somewhere) even the dark is afraid of, then you can bet that there’ll be a secret government agency covering them up for our own good. That last phrase isn’t ironic; if people suspected for a moment that the only thing Lovecraft got wrong was to underestimate the power and malignity of cosmic evil, life would become unbearable. If the secret got out and (consequently) other things got in, life would become impossible. Whatever then walked the Earth would not be life, let alone human. The horror of this prospect is, in the story, linked to the horrors of real history. 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. Not, in this case, because the words are gory, but because the history is all too real. To summarise would spoil, and might make the writing appear to make light of the worst of human accomplishments. It does not. Read it and see. Charlie has written wisely and well in the Afterword about the uncanny parallels between the Cold War thriller and the horror story. (Think, for a moment, what the following phrase would call to mind if you’d never heard it before: “Secret intelligence.”) There is, however, a third side to the story. 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...

Product details

• Authors: Charles Stross
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 03.01.2006
• EAN: 9780441013654
• ISBN: 978-0-441-01365-4
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 203 mm x 23 mm
• Series: A Laundry Files Novel; A Laundry Files Novel; Laundry Files Novel
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy