[Dolorous Menhir]

The many-angled ones will return. Never forget.

This post has been edited by Dolorous Menhir: 17 February 2010 - 06:46 PM

[Abyss]

stone monkey, on 15 February 2010 - 10:01 PM, said:

... Overtime (Which is brand new, by the looks of things...)
And
Down on the Farm (Which is published in the Wireless collection; along with some other goodies...)

...

Read these last night. Good fun solid Bob Howard stories. DOWN' seems to be predictable but has a nice twist and OVERTIME is just fun but also very interesting in a CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN sort of way.

Dolorous Menhir, on 17 February 2010 - 06:46 PM, said:

The many-angled ones will return. Never forget.

- Abyss, ...dated a many-angled one for a while... ...it was confusing...

[stone monkey]

And because I'm all about the giving, there's a couple more books and short stories you might want to glance over for your spy fiction/Cthulhu mashup needs...

The Spiraling Worm by David Conyers & John Sunseri - which was apparently originally planned to be a tie-in to the Call of Cthulhu: Delta Green RPG campaign setting but eventually went on its own not-so-merry way. It's less clever than the Stross (but few things are as clever imo) but it's pretty much the same kind of deal only with slightly more conventional protagonists. Coincidentally enough, my copy of this was left on my doorstep by the Amazon Fairy this morning; I was just reading the part where a bunch of terrorists are trying to destroy the Vatican by summoning Cthugha, the Elder God of Fire who was responsible for the Tunguska Incident (who's from August Derleth's Cthulhu Mythos continuations, if you're interested). There's also a part about Nyarlathotep showing up during the Vietnam War; it's quite fun.

"The Unthinkable" by Bruce Sterling - which is in his Globalhead short story collection and has more of a Cold War theme to it. That collection also contains "Our Neural Chernobyl", which is well worth reading in its own right.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 17 February 2010 - 11:35 PM

[Abyss]

Just finished THE JENNIFER MORGUE. Not as brilliant as ATROCITY but just as clever in its own way.
Totally worth the read - picture James Bond as a nerd, vs the minions of Cthulu. Then amplify.

- Abyss, had a Delta Green scenario at work the other day.

[stone monkey]

I do agree with you that The Atrocity Archives is the better read of the two. But I just love the nerve of what Stross did in The Jennifer Morgue. I came into it pretty cold (obviously, I'd read the other one) so I didn't realise quite what he was up to with the metaplot until some way in; at which point I was laughing like a drain for the rest of the book as I spotted all the little nods and in-jokes. In my defence, I did spot it before poor Bob Howard did and way before it was actually exposited in the book.

Spoiler

For those who won't bother reading it, the James Bond thing is a dead giveaway as the characters are literally constrained to follow the generic plot of a Bond movie because of a magical ritual that the evil billionaire villain has performed. Even down to the coda at the end which nods towards Diamonds Are Forever. Of course the good guys, apart from Bob, are well aware of this, which allows them to manipulate both the villain and the reader into believing that the wrong person is the Bond avatar. Genius...

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 04 April 2010 - 10:17 PM

[RodeoRanch]

This seems to the Stross thread so I'll chime in that I tried reading "Accelerando." Couldn't make it past about a hundred pages. Just hated it.

I'm a Debbie Downer.

[Abyss]

@STONE MONKEY re Jennifer Morgue

Spoiler

yeah, you have to admire the sheer audacity of Stross using the James Bond 'concept' that way. The complete mess Bob makes of the baccarat game, the tux, the piranha tank, and especially the Q-division Smartcar... 'The car ejects' had me lol'ing.
And the thing with the laser pointer and the possessed cat was priceless.

On the broader scope, the addition of the Deep Ones and the Cthonians to the world was REALLY interesting, in the sense that Stross is really unafraid to go balls out with the setting and the scope of what the Laundry deals with.

Re PIMPF... nothing special although the fifteenth level half orc courtesan was worth the read.

- Abyss, still doesn't know what a pimpf is.

[stone monkey]

Because Cthulhuesque threads should never just lie sleeping....

But mainly because The Fuller Memorandum is being published in the UK this week. As some of you may be aware, I'm likely to be all over this in much the same manner as a starving lion would be all over a particularly delicious-looking, chubby, asthmatic and limping wildebeast...

I shall let you know whether Stross has managed to get lightning in a bottle for a 3rd time when I've finished devouring...

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 29 June 2010 - 08:39 PM

[Abyss]

stone monkey, on 29 June 2010 - 08:39 PM, said:

Because Cthulhuesque threads should never just lie sleeping....

But mainly because The Fuller Memorandum is being published in the UK this week. As some of you may be aware, I'm likely to be all over this in much the same manner as a starving lion would be all over a particularly delicious-looking, chubby, asthmatic and limping wildebeast...

I shall let you know whether Stross has managed to get lightning in a bottle for a 3rd time when I've finished devouring...

Supposed to be available in pb in Canada like tomorrow. Am all over it like an HR manager on a demonic summoning equasion...

- Abyss, ...CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, muthafukkahs!!!!

[Aptorian]

I'd been meaning to find this thread after I read Atrocity Archive and Jennifer Morgue.

I remain undecided on how fond I am of these books. I am not quite convinced that Stross actually knows what the hell he's doing, or rather, where his strength lies.

Both the books had great build up and both books left me a little cold when I got to the end. On the other hand, reading both books, when I got to the second, smaller short story I fell in love with his writing all over again.

Stross is extremely good at mashing up the technical and the occult, covering it in enough bullshit that it all sounds so logical and true. Especially the short story with Scorpion Stare really impressed me. It was so ridiculously technical you had to love it.

How ever both the big stories annoyed the hell out of me, because they promised a big bad and all we get is a dark henchman. I know that there is a logic to this, you can't have a fucking Frost Giant actually enter the scene because that would annihilate everyone and everything, but I just expected something more spectacular then what he gave us. It was really bad in Jennifer Morgue where

Spoiler

Bob and Red headed girl friend as bond have just re-united. The Bond villain got smacked by tentacle battleship and it is about to just quite reawaken and unleash hell on earth. Bob and red head step out on the other other side of the door, meet the strike team and the story MOTHER FUCKING ENDS JUST LIKE THAT, skip to prologue. What. The. Fuck. Stross!?

This is where there should have been 50 pages more. Big bad Elder God machine smashes its way out of the confines. Begins ripping reality into pieces. Eats some SAS soldiers as appetizers. The deep one tentacles begin to rise. The Laundry calls in a nuclear strike, which is doomed to fail. In the last moment before the Elder God restarted world war eldritc horror, Bob and red head MacGyver a magical something something that de-powers the Elder God and every one lives unhappily ever after.

Instead we just get an abrupt ending to the story. It was disappointing.

I felt the same way finishing AA. It was a good book, but I was surprised how... simple... the story really turned out to be. It bugs me that the Nazi Eye Worms guy didn't pose more of a threat. That he didn't create more damage while he was on our side of reality. I was expecting something more complicated.

...

Another part of the books that annoys me is Bob being so clueless and the brass giving him so little information. In the second book I know there is a reason for it. But there's so many times where I had a very hard time believing Bob was acting like such a Noob. Not after 5 years of field work and him supposedly being a genious.

that combined with that whole "the Laundy is cheap" business. Come on here. The Laundry is the last bastion defending Britain. Don't fucking tell me that they wouldn't have a ridiculous budget, or if they had to couldn't just hypnotize the treasury into giving them a ridiculous budget.

It's a cute quirk of Stross universe, but it messes with the story.

I have a hard time deciding whether I'm reading a spy novel, a dork diary or a dry comedy some times, the problem is that it doesn't really mesh very well. I can't really suspend my sense of disbelief at times.

But all this aside. This is still some of the best urban spy fantasy I've ever read.

[stone monkey]

I'm actually halfway through The Fuller Memorandum as we speak - I stopped off at a bookshop before I went to work today and picked up a copy... The usual madness is definitely in evidence... I laughed like a drain when I found out about The White Elephants for instance...btw REALLY don't read this one if you're going to read the book!

Spoiler

RAF Squadron #666 who fly Concordes!

To some extent I agree with Apts criticisms, the endings are a bit disappointing - The Brass keeping Bob clueless is entirely understandable - even in my part of the Civil Service you only get access to the information you truly need and then usually well after you need it in the first place, not before. In an environment where simply knowing certain things can kill you (and a lot of other people in the bargain) I can well imagine such information being doled out sparingly.

As for budgets; again as a Civil Servant I'm well aware that the Crown does absolutely everything on the cheap, Defence of the Realm included... There is only so much money to go around after all... Making do with what you've got, which may actually be wildly unsuited for the task in hand, is almost a British institution...

And these things are really an exercise in style more than anything else. It's Stross having a bit of fun and inviting us along for the ride. And when the ride is this good, I'm not all that bothered about the destination...

[Edit]

Okay, finished that.

Oh dear, Bob really didn't have a good time of it this time around. Lots of juicy stuff about CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN and a few other things (Angleton for one...) to whet the appetite for the next one, though. Stross is working his way through spy fiction authors; The Atrocity Archives was Len Deighton, The Jennifer Morgue was Ian Fleming, The Fuller Memorandum was Robert Ludlum and, from what Stross himself says, the next one, if he gets to publish it, will be a Modesty Blaise mashup... which should be fun.

I shudder to think at who he'll pick for the eventual finale, if he ever gets around to writing it (they're apparently not all that popular with his publishers...) Given the scale that I would think, after reading this one, that it would have to be at (CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN has huge ramifications that just get bigger with each story!), my money would be on Tom Clancy. Make of that what you will.

Next up for Stross, I believe, is Rule 34 which will be set in the same universe as Halting State His site says he's finished what he hopes will be the final draft this week. So I can't wait for that.

Oh yes, and look out for the shout out to The Dresden Files, I'm guessing Stross occasionally reads the same books as his protagonists...

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 30 June 2010 - 10:56 PM

[Abyss]

I'm dodging Fuller Memorandum spoilers but have to vent about what an absolute pain it is to find this book in paperback. Initially there were supposed to be a bunch of them at my local chapters, so i waited, then suddenly 'oh sorry we're not getting those, just the more expensive hardback', and of course the pb is sold out everywhere online... frak.

It's a conspiracy. Frikin Deep Ones are grabbing the cheaper pbs, i'm sure of it.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 20 July 2010 - 06:05 PM, said:

I'm dodging Fuller Memorandum spoilers but have to vent about what an absolute pain it is to find this book in paperback. ...

So this was weird. Amazon.all and Chapters were all sold out of the mmpb with no arrival date in sight. Book Depository didn't have it either.

But Amazon.ca had a second hand edition of the mmpb that turned out to be a brand new one ffrom the Book Depository... at a seriously reduced price such that while amazon tacks on a shipping charge (even tho Book Dep' ships free), it's still less than i would have paid for a new one at a bookstore or from any of the online vendors when they had it in like a year or so...

I mean, !yay me! for finding it at a sweet price rather than waiting forever but wtf???

- Abyss, notes CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is clearly fucking with reality.

[Abyss]

warning...
SPOILERS SPOILERS
BALLS OUT TENTACLED FULLER MEMORANDUM
SPOILERS BELOW HERE NOT BLOCKED NOT SAFE
NOT SHEILDED
NOT WARDED F
UCK YOU AND YOUR WHINY CUSHY SAFE LIFE SPOILERS CASE FUCKING NIGHTMARE GREEN IS SPOILERS COMING AND ITS SPOILERS
JUST A SPOILERS QUESTION OF SPOILSERS TIME
BEFORE SOMETHING SPOILERS EATZ YOUR BRAIN SPOILERS
SPOILERS FULLER MEMORANDUM AND PREVIOUS BOOKS
TOTAL
SPOILERS ABOVE YOUR CLEARANCE LEVEL SPOILERS

SPOILERS


okay, that should do it...

Some responses first...

stone monkey, on 30 June 2010 - 07:16 PM, said:

...To some extent I agree with Apts criticisms, the endings are a bit disappointing -

can't agree. i see where you're coming from but especially in spy/espionage novels the finale isn't necessarily a big finish or even a clear one, and given the universe Stross has going those sort of end just make sense.

That said, FULLER had a totally satisfying finish.

Quote

The Brass keeping Bob clueless is entirely understandable - even in my part of the Civil Service you only get access to the information you truly need and then usually well after you need it in the first place, not before. In an environment where simply knowing certain things can kill you (and a lot of other people in the bargain) I can well imagine such information being doled out sparingly.

The point is made more than once that Angleton expects Bob to deal with situations without pre-conceptions, which makes sense when you consider that if you're line agent/geeks actually knew exactly what they were dealing with every time most of them would opt for the zombie-mailroom jobs.

Quote

As for budgets...And these things are really an exercise in style more than anything else. It's Stross having a bit of fun and inviting us along for the ride. And when the ride is this good, I'm not all that bothered about the destination...

Agreed.

Quote

Oh dear, Bob really didn't have a good time of it this time around. Lots of juicy stuff about CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN and a few other things (Angleton for one...) to whet the appetite for the next one, though.

seriously. it was interesting how the prologue sets the stage "my arm is fucked and Mo and I are apart and the world is ending" such that you KNOW awful stuff is coming but you NEED to know the what and how. Stross, by telling us at the outset that the lead at least is guaranteed to live thru, skips the fake suspence in favour of the real question of what is going to happen.

And wow does Bob get run thru it this time.

Quote

Stross is working his way through spy fiction authors; ..., The Fuller Memorandum was Robert Ludlum ...

Took me a minute to see this but the stalking horse spy who turns the tables is a Ludlum classic, as is the loved-one spy to the rescue , so makes sense here.

Quote

...my money would be on Tom Clancy. Make of that what you will.

I make hopeso sandwiches of that. Stross doing Clancytech vs Cthulu is pure win. I'm seeing an american task force with Bob as liaison...

Quote

Oh yes, and look out for the shout out to The Dresden Files, I'm guessing Stross occasionally reads the same books as his protagonists...

Saw it, chuckled.


So overall this was a nice addition to the LAUNDRY novels. Bob really grows into his own here, with some tacit acknowledgement that notwithstanding his slacker origins, he's actually damn good at what he does. Panin's assessement of Bob was lol-level funny '''...his false reputation as a bumbler served him well...". The way he turns the ritual at the end was perfect in keeping with everything the books have been telling us.

The explanation of who TEAPOT was was nicely handled, logical and not overplayed as a massive revelation.

Excuse the fanboy moment but how fucking cool was Mo and her violin in this book? From the second hand CLUB ZERO mission ("...most of the teacher's face..."!) to the revelations about the instrument (HOW many strangled babies???) to her cranking out the Wagner at the finale... you can tell Stross really has fun writing her.

Nice revelations re CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN here. The notion that the increase in human population will ultimately trigger the attention of Bad Things is a really neat and well thought out concept.

I also thought i caught a hint as to the eventual response. Towards the end evil high priestess lady says, re the Thing In The Pyramid 'We couldn't kill it without an output of necromantic energy that would attract the attention of every brain eating elder godfucker for a thousand light years'... so maybe they CAN kill it, and the trick is to do so with more subtlety, or such a big necro-ka-boom that everything Out There thinks twice before knocking.

QUESTION: so was the entire 'CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is now!' thing strictly just the false lead to draw out the cultists, or is it still years ahead of when expected? Thoughts?


Loved it. Solid entry into the series.

- Abyss, will look fwd to more.

[Abyss]

and i almost forgot.... NecronomiPod = GENIUS!!!!

[stone monkey]

I'm not sure how much of it was a ruse. Some must have been. But from Bob's intro and a few things the cultists said, I suspect not all of it was... And unless the stories "Overtime and "Down on the Farm" were just to throw us off the scent, I think Bob and his merry band are in for some fireworks fairly soon.

CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN as an emergent property of human population numbers is genius (it has a touch of the Warren Ellis about it too, if you ask me) And my biggest chuckle was still Squadron 666. The exact nature of Mo's violin was somewhat unsettling, as was the Laundry's seriously considering restoring it...

Now that we've seen that the Russians are in the game, it would also be nice to have a closer look at the other big players; we've already had a glimpse of the Americans and some info on their preparations for the looming disaster would be nice. But what about the Chinese? Or the Israelis? Now they would be really interesting (weaponised Kaballah anyone?)

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 16 August 2010 - 09:35 PM

[Abyss]

stone monkey, on 16 August 2010 - 09:35 PM, said:

I'm not sure how much of it was a ruse. Some must have been. But from Bob's intro and a few things the cultists said, I suspect not all of it was... And unless the stories "Overtime and "Down on the Farm" were just to throw us off the scent, I think Bob and his merry band are in for some fireworks fairly soon.

yeah the short stories also compound it, and Angleton's comments to Mo towards the end are similarly ominous.

Quote

CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN as an emergent property of human population numbers is genius (it has a touch of the Warren Ellis about it too, if you ask me)

iirc, Stross and Ellis are buds.

Quote

And my biggest chuckle was still Squadron 666.

Shades of Stross' A COLDER WAR short story there. Google it if you haven't seen it yet. Not a Laundry story but in a VERY similar vein and damn cool pun intended.

Quote

The exact nature of Mo's violin was somewhat unsettling, as was the Laundry's seriously considering restoring it...

VERY unsettling, and I suspect the Russians will have less hesitation. Ew.

Quote

Now that we've seen that the Russians are in the game, it would also be nice to have a closer look at the other big players; we've already had a glimpse of the Americans and some info on their preparations for the looming disaster would be nice. But what about the Chinese? Or the Israelis? Now they would be really interesting (weaponised Kaballah anyone?)

We've had bits and pieces about other European players - the Dutch iirc where CLUB ZERO went down. It's also been stated more than once that a lot of the crazies in the middle east and africa are linked to demonism, sometimes unknowingly... Stross' brief explanation of the Blood Libel was the most concise accurate description of that i've ever read.

There were also some hints that the Deep Ones at least are on side, tho' the Cthonians remain a mystery damn i love this series.

[Abyss]

If you haven't read it, the Stross story MISSILE GAP is free and worth the read.

Link fu STRIKE!: http://subterraneanp...charles-stross/


A bit of a mind fuck. Good fun.

[QuickTidal]

So you're saying I ought to give this Stross guy a go? THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES you say...?

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 22 December 2010 - 04:41 PM, said:

So you're saying I ought to give this Stross guy a go? THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES you say...?

have i not pimped this series at you yet or were you just not paying attention?

Yes. Charlie Stross. ATROCITY ARCHIVES, JENNIFER MORGUE, FULLER MEMORANDUM and google the short stories OVERTIME and ON THE FARM they're online free. Nerdspies vs Cthulu. brilliant fun.

Then read A COLDER WAR, also free, just for good measure. And MISSILE GAP but that's more unreleated.

Go. Go read. All of it. Go now. Thank us later.