The Laundry Files is a Lovecraftian series of novels by Charles
Stross. They mix the genres of spy thriller, science fiction, and Lovecraftian
horror. Their main character for the first five novels is "Bob
Howard" (a pseudonym taken for security purposes), a one-time I.T.
consultant turned field agent. Howard is recruited to work for the British
government agency "the Laundry", which deals with occult threats. In
this world, computers and mathematical equations are just as useful, and
perhaps more potent, than classic spellbooks, pentagrams, and sigils for
influencing unseen ancient powers and opening gates to other dimensions. These
occult struggles happen largely out of view of the public, as the Laundry seeks
to keep the methods for contacting such powers under wraps. There are also
elements of dry humor and satirisation of bureaucracy.
While the stories are partially inspired by the Cthulhu
mythos universe created by H. P. Lovecraft and others, they are not set in
Lovecraft's universe. Stross also decides that in a world where
"magic" works, surely the greatest magicians would be scientists who
closely study the phenomena; thus his work is replete with a secret history of
how various acclaimed researchers of the past also dabbled or stumbled upon
occult uses of their work.
Join Corwyn Allen as he continues in The Atrocity Archives, the first volume of the Laundry Files, by Charles Stross. Live in voice.
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