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The Atrocity Archives (Paperback)

~ Charles Stross (Author) "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..." (more)
Key Phrases: basilisk gun, concrete cows, field ops, Santa Cruz, Milton Keynes, Scary Spice (more...)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lovecraft's Cthulhu meets Len Deighton's spies in Stross's latest, as the Scottish author explains in his afterword to this offbeat book offering two related long novellas, "The Atrocity Archive" and "The Concrete Jungle" (the latter previously unpublished). With often hilarious results, the author mixes the occult and the mundane, the truly weird and the petty. 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. With his Palm, aka his Hand of Glory (a severed hand that, when ignited, renders the holder invisible), and his smarts, he saves the world from a powerful external force seeking to enter our universe to suck it dry. In "Jungle," Bob teams up with a cop, Josephine, to save the Laundry from a powermonger who seeks to stage an internal coup by using zombies as her minions. Amid all the bizarre happenings are the everyday trappings of a British bureaucracy. 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. 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

The national bestselling author 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.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Ace Trade (January 3, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0441013651
  • ISBN-13: 978-0441013654
  • Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.1 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #304,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Stross
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
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. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
basilisk gun, concrete cows, field ops, software audit, car pound, warrant card, spy fiction, airlock door, platonic realm, carbon nuclei
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Santa Cruz, Milton Keynes, Scary Spice, Hand of Glory, Black Chamber, Section Three, Sergeant Howe, Middle Eastern, Bob Howard, Ministry of Defense, Professor O'Brien, Range Rover, Third Reich, Official Secrets Act, Site Able, Von Schachter, Capital Laundry Services, Counter-Possession Unit, Dansey House, Manhattan Project, Monk's Road, Yusuf Qaradawi, Bletchley Park, Detective Inspector Sullivan, Foreign Office
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (53 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Never Park In A Hilbert Space, July 22, 2004
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This review is from: The Atrocity Archives (Hardcover)
What if Alan Turing solved one more problem and completed one last theorem? And suddenly higher mathematics was awash in spells, summonings, and alternate dimensions where forces lived that would like nothing better than to munch on your brain. Thanks to the Turing-Lovecraft theorem magic happens, almost inevitably for the worst.

The British Secret Service (MI-6, the anti-spell branch) has a unique way of dealing with theoreticians who trip over the right formulae - they hire them into The Laundry and retire them to meaningless desk jobs. Bob Howard, however, is a little to itchy for the passive life. After a lot of trying he manages to get into field work. Now, as a relief from an irritating boss who counts paperclips and takes regular attendance, Bob gets to deal with dark forces and demonic possession.

There are two tales in this book. The first is The Atrocity Archives, which was Charles Stross's initial effort. Told as one long computer geek in-joke, the story introduces us to Bob and follows him through his first set of assignments and nervous breakdowns, while a series of ever more peculiar administrators keep telling him what a good job he's doing.

And he is doing a good job. Spotting mathematicians who have crossed the line, saving workshop attendees from being munched, and getting thrown out of the States for poking too far into the badness on what should have been a routine extraction. But even good agents have bad days and our wisecracking hero finds himself going through a portal to rescue a very attractive scientist from a very dead earth.

The second story Concrete Jungle mixes interdepartmental politics, electronic basilisks, and fears about the end of the world in a story of one too many cows.

Intrigued? If you are comfortable with computers, or at least have a handle on geek speak and enjoy twisted, funny writers whose imaginations have run wild, this is something you will want to read. Despite a large serving of sarcasm and irony, Stross also manages to deliver a genuinely interesting plot with as much action as there is esoteric muttering. By all means check this out. I'm going to order everything else he's written.


 
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious "hard dark fantasy", May 25, 2004
By Peter Hollo (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Atrocity Archives (Hardcover)
Charlie Stross has been making a name for himself over recent years for his extraordinary "Accelerando" stories, chronicling human and post-human civilisation towards and past the Singularity event at which technology becomes sentient and near-godlike. Another future world is being explored in the novel Singularity Sky and sundry short stories/future novels - also post-Singularity, and imbued with a pervading humour even through some quite horrifying passages.

The Atrocity Archives is best read with this in mind: despite looking a bit like horror, this is really hard science fiction with a lot of humour and a very weird Lovecraftian twist regarding the nature of the world. It's geeky but cool, a clever take on the spy thriller, and the only connection it has with "A Colder War" is that it's Lovecraft-inspired spy fiction by the same author. (Indeed, other even sillier Lovecraft homages appear in his short story collection "Toast").
The one-star review below should be taken with a grain of salt: don't come to any book with brittle expectations and then complain that it's the book's fault when your expectations are dashed!

The Atrocity Archives is quite unlike anything else out there at the moment, but those familiar with Stross, Cory Doctorow, or various other contemporary sf authors' up-to-the-minute genre-busting fiction will eat it up with gusto.
And the beginning passage, in which a succession of everyday events (such a pager going off in our hero's pocket) are made ominous by horror-inflected prose, is pure gold.



 
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Electrify Your Synapses with Stross' Livewire Lovecraft Show, June 13, 2004
By misterfurioso (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   
This review is from: The Atrocity Archives (Hardcover)
These two droll, amazing and entertaining stories hopefully herald the start of a cycle of "Laundry" tales. Stross' obsession with science, computers, internet technology, office management structures (!), occult history and HP Lovecraft meshes into a dizzyingly fun reading experience. Somehow, massive exposure to all this information - cleverly turned on its head to meet the demands of the stories - causes synapses to sizzle and crackle, giving rise to an illusory boost of one's own intelligence. Yes, Virginia, reading Stross makes you feel smarter, as others have observed....

This is Must Read stuff for Lovecraft fans, but if you like the work of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, or Grant Morrison's THE INVISIBLES, then this is more or less guaranteed to flip your wig.


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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Very funny, well written, imaginative, and oddly dull
I found myself laughing out loud a few times reading this book. Stross is a gifted writer in many ways.
Published 9 days ago by C. Elgin

3.0 out of 5 stars Substitutes math, science, and CS in-jokes for substance
This book was like a doughnut: enjoyable as I chewed through its pages, but guiltily hollow in retrospect.
Published 1 month ago by Davis C. Doherty

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not convincing
I'd never heard of Charles Stross until my wife picked up this book for me. Its premise is interesting: A Lovecraftian world where summoning can be done much more efficiently...
Published 4 months ago by Lars Clausen

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast, smart, fun
The first time I finished reading The Atrocity Archives, I did something I hadn't done in an age: turned back to the beginning and read it straight through again.
Published 4 months ago by TNH

4.0 out of 5 stars Harry Potter Meets MI-6
A rolicking tale about the Thule Society and whatever happened to the Nazi Werewolves that Hitler left to continue after WW2.
Published 11 months ago by R. K. Anderson

4.0 out of 5 stars Clever fun with spies, demons, reality hackers, Nazis, and reams of paperwork
In THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES Stross does for WWII spy agencies, ISO 9000, and Unix hackers what he attempted to do for MMORPGs and venture capitalists in HALTING STATE...
Published 12 months ago by Michael Lichter

3.0 out of 5 stars If you have to explain, it probably wasn't funny
The author adds a very lengthy explanation of what this book is about as an after word. He compares himself to other authors and other genres in what seems to be a justification...
Published 15 months ago by Steven J. Bissell

4.0 out of 5 stars Good fun! Cthulhu visits The Office in Spies.
This book would make perfect reading for the unsung system administrator in your life. What if the intricacies of taking care of data could accidentally call evil from another...
Published 17 months ago by frumiousb

5.0 out of 5 stars ISO-9000 Compliant Demonology
I usually dislike the horror genre in any of its forms, and have no liking for Lovecraftian fantasy.
Published 21 months ago by Jules Mazarin

4.0 out of 5 stars Get past the geek-fu and you have more original ideas per chapter ...
My first exposure to Charles Stross was his short story "A Colder War" ... which he generously makes available for free, on his website.
Published 21 months ago by Stephen Jarjoura

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