The name of the protagonist is a clear homage to Robert E. Actually the book is full of scientific and pseudo-scientific jargon.Įven the supernatural part of the stories has a geek flavor because Charles Stross is inspired mainly by the authors most popular to geeks. Bob Howard is a computer expert and in the two stories in “The Atrocity Archives” there’s a notable use of computer jargon. This is not the first time a writer fits the occult into science however Charles Stross does it his way, which is very geeky. Bob Howard himself ends up working for the Laundry as a computer technician after his deeds as a hacker get into the world of magic. Of course this is the kind of offer you can’t refuse but it’s an alternative to physical elimination. Luckily after that intervention the Laundry changed its policy and started offering a job to people of value who on their own discovered something they shouldn’t have. It’s no coincidence that Bob Howard tells us know that the great mathematician Alan Turing was murdered by agents of the Laundry because he had discovered a theorem very dangerous as it’s bordering on magic. The fundamental concept introduced by Charles Stross is that magic is nothing but an extension of the science we already know, particularly mathematics.
Actually the described fictional universe is different. The story is told in first person from Bob Howard’s point of view so inevitably he’s the best developed character.Ĭharles Stross had already written a story of that kind titled “A Colder War” and someone mistakenly consider it as linked to the Bob Howard stories. The novel “The Atrocity Archive” is very short by today’s standards – less than 250 pages – and essentially introduces this occult secret agent’s particular fictional world. “The Atrocity Archives” contains the first Bob Howard stories written by Charles Stross. Bob Howard begins to investigate a concrete cow and eventually discovers that behind it there’s a conspiracy that will endanger the Laundry itself. In “The Concrete Jungle” the power of the Gorgons was implemented in surveillance cameras. The first task is tedious and at the end Howard is soaking wet but the next assignment, which is supposed to be routine, becomes a deadly battle fought in two universes with a creature conjured by the Nazis decades earlier. “The Atrocity Archive” introduces Bob Howard in his first active-duty assignments on behalf of the Laundry, a secret British government agency with a unique specialization, the occult. In 2005 it received the Hugo Award as the Best Novella of the year. The novella “The Concrete Jungle” was published for the first time in 2004. The novel “The Atrocity Archive” has been published for the first time in the magazine “Spectrum SF” between November 2001 and November 2002. “The Atrocity Archives” contains two stories by Charles Stross.
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