The Atrocity Archives
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| Author | Charles Stross |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Golden Gryphon Press |
| Released | May 28, 2004 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 295 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 1-930846-25-8 |
| Followed by | The Jennifer Morgue |
The Atrocity Archives (2004, ISBN 1-930846-25-8) is a collection of two stories by British author Charles Stross, consisting of the short novel The Atrocity Archive (originally serialized in Spectrum SF) and The Concrete Jungle, which won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novella.
The stories are Lovecraftian spy thrillers involving a secret history of the 20th century. Horror elements such as the Nazis using higher mathematics to open "gates" to other dimensions are combined with humorous elements satirizing bureaucracy. The protagonist of both stories is a computer expert named Bob Howard forced to work for a secret British intelligence organization called "The Laundry".
A sequel entitled The Jennifer Morgue, patterned after the James Bond movies, was released in November in 2006.
Stross's earlier story "A Colder War" (available online) also mixes elements of Lovecraft and espionage, and is sometimes mistaken as a tie-in with the Bob Howard stories, however the fictional background and assumptions are quite different.
[edit] See also
Another work of speculative fiction that tackles many of the same themes (albeit from a Catholic perspective) is Tim Powers Declare. In the afterword, Stross notes that friends warned him against reading Declare while he was working on The Atrocity Archives due to the strong parallels between the two works.
[edit] External links
- "The Concrete Jungle" from The Atrocity Archives published under a Creative Commons License
- Excerpt from "The Atrocity Archive" on MarsDust.com.
