"Imagine a world where speaking or writing words can literally and direclty make things happen, where getting one of those words wrong can wreck unbelievable havoc, where with the right spell you can summon immensely powerful agencies to work your will. Imagine further that that in this world there is an administered division of labour, among the magicians them selves and those who coordinate their activities. It's bureaucratic and also (therefore) chaotic, and it's full of people at desks muttering curses and writing invocations, all beavering away at a small part of the big picture. The coordinators, because they don't understand what's going on , demand easy prey for smooth talking preachers of bizarre cults that demand arbitrary sacrifices and vanish with large amounts of money. Welcome to the IT department"Este es un libro al que posiblemente no hubiera llegado si no hubiera sido por esta recomendable entrada en Sense of Wonder escrita por Odo. Os emplazo a leerla y a resistir la tentación de empezar a leer la serie. Si lo conseguís es que sois más fuertes que yo. Parte de la responsabilidad, sin embargo, le corresponde a la generosidad de Jm_oriol por regalarme el libro. Gracias a los dos. Ahora no tendréis que saber lo que podría haberos pasado si no me hubiera gustado el libro...The Atrocity Archives parte de una idea tan simple como potente: las matemáticas (y por extensión la informática) pueden influir directamente en la realidad (esta y el infinito número de realidades adyacentes) a través del plano de las ideas descrito por Platón, dando lugar al fenómeno conocido vulgarmente como magia. En el universo de la novela esto es reconocido oficialmente al menos desde que Alan Turing completó su teorema sobre “gramáticas de fase conjugada para la invocación extradimensional”, dando lugar al rápido desarrollo de un área de la informática denominado computación matemática esotérica. Como tantas otras áreas de la ingenieria este conocimiento tiene muchas posibilidades de aplicación directa en el campo de la industria armamentística y, obviamente, implicaciones muy serias en términos de la escalada bélica entre las diversas potencias mundials o grupos terroristas/revolucionarios variopintos. De ahí, y de las brasas de una de las ramas de la inteligencia británica casi extintas después de la 2ª Guerra Mundial, nace The Laundry (La Lavandería), la agencia encargada de velar por la seguridad de los súbditos de Su Majestad ante las múltiples amenazas sobrenaturales y extradimensionales que ponen en peligro la seguridad del mundo ante el desconocimiento de la práctica totalidad de la especie humana. Es precisamente en The Laundry donde trabaja Bob Howard, experto en demonología computacional que es ¿ascendido? a agente de campo al principio de la novela y nos explica sus peripecias en primera persona con grandes dosis de ironía y sarcasmo.La clave del éxito de The Atrocity Archives, desde mi punto de vista, es su habilidad para dotar a una historia de fantasía urbana con toques Lovecraftianos de una personalidad más propia de la ciencia-ficción dura, con densas explicaciones matemáticas del funcionamiento del mundo y de la magia que resultan sorprendentemente convincentes, sobretodo para un ignorante matemático como yo. Bueno, eso y muchas otras cosas como el retorcido sentido del humor de Charles Stross y su invención de un personaje tan carismático como Bob Howard, siempre en precario equilibrio entre la necesidad de sobrevivir a los peligros a los que le exponen sus misiones y la de superar los obstáculos, no menos dramáticos, que le plantea la absurda (y realista) burocracia que impera en The Laundry.En esta serie Charles Stross, que tiene fama de irregular, escribe con una prosa densa y sobreadjetivada que refleja la personalidad irónica e hiperactiva de su protagonista. En manos de un escritor menos hábil esto daría lugar a un ritmo lleno de obstáculos que dificultarían el fluir de la historia pero Stross consigue una escritura que se lee a la velocidad del rayo y se presta al tipo de historia que está explicando y al universo plagado de secretos que subyacen bajo su superficie. Los únicos obstáculos a la lectura que yo he encontrado, pero me consta que en este caso eso depende más del lector que del libro, son los fenomenales info-dumps intercalados a lo largo de la narración repletos de términos derivados del mundo de la matemática y de la informática.The Atrocity Archives contiene dos novelitas relativamente breves con sendas historias más o menos independientes y no son más que las primeras entregas de una saga que ya cuenta con cuatro entregas (y de nuevo os remito al artículo en Sense of Wonder). Si las continuaciones mantienen el nivel de este inicio no hay duda de que se trata de una de las lecturas imprescindibles del género. Le pongo 4 de las 5 estrellas posibles.
This might be one of my favourite Charles Stross books. I think it’s the effortless blend of bureaucratic humour and horror, and the slight homages to spy fiction, that makes The Atrocity Archives so appealing. It’s not just any one thing, and it isn’t too much of any of these things. There are plenty of ways to play the "secret government agency that fights the supernatural" angle, and plenty of them are valid. Stross has gone the tongue-in-cheek, cryptopunk route, and his particular brand of relentless, sardonic humour fits perfectly with this style.The Atrocity Archives speaks to me as a math geek. All the magic in this book is arguably sufficiently advanced science, in the sense that it’s done using math—incredibly complex math. Turing cracked the P=NP problem, and in so doing realized it gave access to other universes. Many of these infinite universes are inhabited by beings like or unlike us—demons and spirits and Lovecraftian Old Ones. And it’s not just what Stross creates; it’s how he describes it: “the many-angled ones who live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set”. He seamlessly integrates math jargon into the conversation, never pausing to explain the lesser terms (he does give a bit of a crash course to things like the Turing problem in a little exposition). I can’t speak for how the mathematically uninitiated will feel about this—I can only hope that the patter will also be seamless, if slightly less explicable—a gentle background noise that eases on into the atmosphere Stross is trying to create.That atmosphere is probably familiar to readers of spy fiction, particularly the over-the-top stories of Fleming and his ilk, for whom the perfect spy is the suave and sophisticated but unrealistically flashy James Bond or lookalike. The agents of the Laundry face global, perhaps even universal, annihilation on a regular basis. Standing toe-to-toe with such unimaginable horror, the only thing one can do is shrug and laugh. It’s the Dr. Strangelove, or Catch-22, appeal to absurdity. Stross reinforces this with many allusions to the Cold War and its lasting effects on the Laundry’s tangled org chart and resources.The Laundry itself is as much a bastion of bureaucracy as it is badassery. Prior to being approved for fieldwork, Bob is little more than a glorified IT technician, running madly around the office trying to keep ancient servers running. His superiors harass him non-stop over missing paperwork; this continues even after he becomes a field agent and begins going on classified operations. Bob doesn’t like putting up with this, and he occasionally manages to wiggle out of it, but the bureaucrats always seem to get the last laugh. (Stross expounds further on that last idea in The Concrete Jungle, a sequel novella that is included in this edition of the book.)So he’s sold me on the setting. The main character is slightly more generic than I might like for a protagonist. But Bob did grow on me—partly, I think, because he isn’t uber-competent, and his intuitive leaps of brilliance always make sense, thanks to sensible foreshadowing. For example, there is one point near the climax of the book where he needs to quickly construct a charm that will render him invisible to some bad guys. Earlier in the book, we established such a charm exists and how it’s made—and, conveniently, Bob had the principal ingredient on his person for an entirely unrelated reason. It all comes together nicely, in a way that signals tight writing and editing that I always appreciate seeing.I’ll admit to getting a bit lost with the plot a few times. Stross draws on obscure points of history and nuances of politics that occasionally escape my grasp (especially when reading this on a transatlantic flight when I should be sleeping but can’t). This doesn’t mar my enjoyment of the story, though; the fun of the action and tone of Bob’s narration is quite enough to see my through to the end. I suspect I’m also just lazy and used to authors who feel the need to explain every detail to the reader, whereas Stross decides to leave the bigger picture disassembled and let the reader put it together—or not—at their own pace and leisure.The Atrocity Archives is the first in a fun series. It’s James Bond meets Dilbert or Douglas Coupland, a story where black humour screens the oppressive knowledge of all the immensely powerful things that go bump in the night. It teeters on the yawning chasm of despair, its appeal to absurdity only just holding it back—and that powerful juxtaposition of light and dark tones creates a story worth reading and discussing.My reviews of the Laundry Files:← The Jennifer Morgue
What do You think about The Atrocity Archives (2006)?
At the end of this edition, Stross includes an interesting essay about how he feels that Deighton wrote horror more than spy novels, and Lovecraft vice versao. He also talks about why horror works (for some readers) and at the end, says that his editor had warned him not to read Declare by Tim Powers until he was done.I have yet to write up my review of Declare, which I think a brilliant novel (it needs another read or two); but I can safely say that the touchpoints between this novel and that are brief.Stross has woven together several stories about Bob, who works at the Laundry, a UK secret service outfit that "cleans up" problematical occult irruptions into our world. It's a combination of horror and humor (the latter got me through the horror aspects) that intensifies the funny by the juxtaposition of petty bureaucracy with eldritch ghastliness, by way of high tech geekspeak. Lots and lots of high tech geekspeak; I suspect that a lot of the fun here is for geeks who understand the language of tech, seeing their hardcore jargon providing explanations for megaverse incursions and other occult shenanigans.If you don't understand geekspeak (like me) you can skim and still follow the story arc, which at least here was fairly linear. I liked the characters, the humor, (loved Pinky and the Brain!) and there was a promising female character in Mo, who is (I hope) shaping up to be Bob's partner.
—Sherwood Smith
I keep trying Stross' work, because I've read other novels of his and I know that there are some elements which interest me, some things which I do keep turning the pages for. I was actually more interested in The Atrocity Archive and "The Concrete Jungle" than I have been in most of his other books, which is a start, but I'm afraid a lot of it went over my head (not geeky enough) and some of it went under (fart jokes).All in all, the alternate history conjured up here is interesting, though I can't really talk about the mathematics, geometry, etc, because I can't write down my own phone number without transposing a digit or two. That somewhat hobbles the story, because I think there's humour and worldbuilding there that I just. don't. get. Which is unfortunately how Stross has made me feel before.I don't think I'll be reading any more of this series, though I quest on in my attempt to find a Stross book I genuinely enjoy. It seems like he has cool ideas, and it's not like it's his writing style that throws me off -- I just don't feel like enough of a nerd!
—Nikki
Two Funny Romps through a Fantasy UniverseBob Howard works for The Laundry (aka Capital Laundry Services), a secret British agency in London. He does double duty as a systems administrator and a field agent specializing in thaumaturgy (that's magic to you guys). In either capacity he's very capable and he has an uncanny ability to attract trouble. This book contains two novels. In the first, the title novel, Bob is sent to California to extract a U.K. citizen who can't leave the U.S. for some reason. He's quite happy to get away from his roommates, Pinky and Brains, two genius slobs who do weird science experiments in his apartment and leave dirty dishes in the sink. He has no idea that the person he is sent to Santa Cruz to rescue, "Mo" (a.k.a. Dr. Dominique O'Brien) is a gorgeous red headed Scot and a very brainy professor in some quasi-mathematical/philosophical specialty. Mo doesn't know that her research is wanted by the bad guys, and her being in the wrong place at the wrong time doesn't help.Suffice it to say that after a thwarted kidnapping and an unpleasant encounter with a reptilian creature that invades her apartment, Mo ends up being sucked through an interdimensional gate to very cold planet in an alternate universe and it's up to Bob and his team mates to get her home safely (and possibly save London too). The resourceful Bob, armed with a "hand of glory" and a Palm Pilot, saves the day.The "Atrocity Archives" of the title refer to a secret trove of Nazi war memorabilia locked in an Amsterdam cellar under the Rijksmuseum. The Nazis played with algemancy (pain magic) and that, it turns out, has something to do with the trouble Mo ends up in.Part of the fun has to do with Stross's loathing for bureaucrats, for which I don't blame him. Bob splits his time between two sets of bosses---James Angleton (also the name of a former CIA chief in the U.S.), who's in charge of field ops, and aside from an occasional lecture, and a fondness for shrunken heads on his desk, isn't too bad; and Harriet and Bridget, a couple of loathsome, petty, nasty, hairsplitters, who only care about forms, time reporting, etc., and with whom Bob is perpetually in trouble (usually because he's late coming into the office because he's been out on a classified mission). Suffice it to say that they get what's coming to them.In the second novel, "The Concrete Jungle", Bob gets involved in a strange case involving Gorgons, networked CCTV cameras, a dead cow, and nasty office politics. Actually he is called out to investigate a Code Blue at 4 am, and then gets dressed down by Harriet for coming into the office late.Things escalate. A detective inspector, Josephine, is enlisted to help. Or rather she is placed under a geas (i.e., coerced to keep silent) and dragged in to help against her will. Zombies make an appearance.Let's just say that Bridget and Harriet REALLY get what's coming to them in this story. Gideon Emery does a wonderful job reading the audio.
—Mona Temchin
