The Atrocity Archives [Mass Market Paperback]

Charles Stross (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Ace Books (2009)
• ASIN: B002WDXHAS
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Charles Stross, 46, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. The author of six Hugo-nominated novels and winner of the 2005 and 2010 Hugo awards for best novella, Stross's works have been translated into over twelve languages.

Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped-catastrophes in the past, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stake-out) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing he tried to change employer just as the bubble burst).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never Park In A Hilbert Space, July 22, 2004

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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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.

27 of 28 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
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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.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Electrify Your Synapses with Stross' Livewire Lovecraft Show, June 12, 2004

By 

misterfurioso (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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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.