A Conventional Boy by Charles Stross

Published by ‎ Tordotcom on January 7, 2025

The long-running Laundry Files series imagines a secret British agency that is tasked with defending Great Britain against occult threats. Since summoning a supernatural being from another dimension is essentially a math problem, supernatural incursions became more prevalent with the proliferation of computers. Laundry snatch squads capture cultists who summon demons and place them in Camp Sunshine for investigation and deprogramming.

As a boy, Derek Reilly mastered the game of Dungeons and Dragons. He did research into the occult to create new game scenarios. The government, mistaking his notes for evidence that he was summoning demons, snatched him and rendered him to Camp Sunshine. Years passed before his captors realized he was just a harmless, stuttering, mildly autistic kid, but by that point, camp authorities worried that he had absorbed too much knowledge of the supernatural to permit his safe release.

Derek has been in Camp Sunshine for thirty years, passing the time by running a Dungeons and Dragons game by mail. When he learns about a nearby Dungeons and Dragons convention, he breaks out of the camp, hoping for a taste of freedom before he turns fifty. Unfortunately, true cultists are also attending the convention.

Iris Carpenter — high priestess of the Brotherhood of the Pharaoh — now works for the Laundry, although she wears an explosive collar that will allow the government to end her life if she uses her skills to help the dark side. Iris leads the search for Derek and then joins a squad from the Laundry to put down the mischief that is arising in the hotel where the convention is being held. Supernatural action ensues.

Fans of the series will recognize Iris. Derek is (I think) new to the series. The most frequently recurring protagonist, Bob Howard, doesn’t appear in the main story, but after this novel concludes, two short stories featuring Bob round out the book.

I always enjoy Charles Stross’ Laundry Files stories, perhaps because he grounds the supernatural in math that opens portals to other dimensions, transforming the series into something that is closer to science fiction than fantasy. Generous infusions of humor make clear that the supernatural isn’t meant to be taken seriously. While some of the supernatural entities are horrific, the books are too funny to fit within the horror genre. A Conventional Boy works as an intelligent, fast-moving action story. Derek is a sympathetic, likeable character who uses his wits to save the day. What more could a reader want?

RECOMMENDED

Quantum of Nightmares by Charles Stross

Published by ‎ Tordotcom on January 11, 2022

The latest Laundry Files novel departs from the usual theme of metahuman intelligence officers saving England from demonic threats. The three interwoven plot threads involve a nanny who has been tasked with kidnapping the four bratty kids of parents who are attending a summit for state-licensed superheroes, a sorceress who discovers that she inherited her boss’ cult after she made her boss disappear, and a supermarket that saves labor costs by animating employees made from meat.

The nanny is Mary MacCandless, who does not appreciate being mistaken for Mary Poppins. Mary’s purse holds far more than it should, including a variety of weapons, but the four kids have powers of their own (one controls plants, another brings toys to life) and are more than a match for Mary. It seems you can’t take metahuman children anywhere, at least if you don’t want the place you visit to be destroyed.

The sorceress is Eve, the executive assistant of Rupert de Montfort Bigge. Eve discovers after making Rupert disappear that she is the heir to his financial empire. Rupert owns an island in the Channel Islands, where he was leading a cult that gains power through human sacrifice. By using an email service from the afterlife, Rupert has instructed his acolytes to sacrifice four metahuman kids. The kids, of course, are Mary’s kidnap victims, although she didn’t realize when she took the job that human sacrifice was on the table. To her credit, that knowledge gives Mary some moral qualms. It’s one thing to kidnap but a much different thing to disembowel.

Eve’s brother Imp has the ability to push people toward decisions that Imp wants them to make. He leads a gang of metahuman criminals, although they spend most of their time playing video games. Eve invites Imp to the island, where they discover the sinister details of Rupert’s cult. Eve also discovers Rupert’s plan to buy a store called Flavrsmart, where a butcher has just been fired for having sex with an effigy he assembled from meat. He’s good at his job, but there are some work rule violations that HR just can’t overlook.

Much of the plot revolves around Flavrsmart’s participation in a “compulsory remedial work placement scheme for persistently non-entrepreneurial dependents — ‘useless eaters’ as the Prime Minister calls them.” The employees are given a mask to wear that projects a computer-generated face and interacts with customers, leaving the employees with nothing to do but stand and walk. The store is taking the government’s concept to a higher level by replacing living employees with dead ones — or just sacks of meat that have shaped into human form (“meat puppets”).

As always, Charles Stross pokes fun at Thatcherism and the conservative tendency toward authoritarianism. Still, Quantum of Nightmares is less political than some Laundry Files novels. It’s also funnier than most. While there is always a degree of playfulness in Laundry Files stories, some take supernatural threats to the planet more seriously than others. Stross added superheroes to the Laundry Files universe several years ago. Their appearance typically signals a lighter approach to his storytelling. This one takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to its over-the-top material.

My favorite Laundry Files novels feature Bob Howard. Most of those novels accept the absurdities of the Laundry Files universe at face value and work as well-told action/adventure stories. Quantum of Nightmares is nevertheless so carefully plotted, so goofily gruesome, and so filled with amusing characters that I have to recommend it. The novel is so far outside the mainstream for the series that readers should be able to understand and enjoy it as a standalone, even if they haven’t read any previous Laundry Files novel.

RECOMMENDED

Escape from Yokai Land by Charles Stross

Published by Tordotcom on March 1, 2022

Escape from Yokai Land (originally titled Escape from Puroland) is a novella set in Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series. The events in the story take place just before the novel The Delerium Brief. Bob Howard is the featured character. Readers who are unfamiliar with the series will probably want to start elsewhere, as the story might otherwise be unendurably puzzling.

The Laundry Files series is set in an alternate universe in which magic is a function of mathematical equations. Between the two world wars, Great Britain (and eventually other countries) developed clandestine departments to protect their countries from incursions of various demons and monsters that are entering the universe through portals or bridges created by computational pollution. Great Britain’s organization is called the Laundry.

Different characters are featured in different novels, but Bob Howard is the first series protagonist and still my favorite. At this point in the series, Howard has risen through the bureaucracy and inherited the powers and duties of his deceased boss James Angleton, including Angleton’s status as the Eater of Souls. Howard is dispatched to Japan, where the counterpart to Howard’s agency viewed Angleton as less than woke in his interaction with the Japanese. Howard tries to do better.

The story is basic. An unusual number of threats have been entering Japan. Howard deals with them while maintaining diplomatic relations with the Japanese. As is often the case, the story’s primary interest lies in the observations that Stross makes as the story unfolds. I particularly liked the notion that Howard doesn’t go to church because he knows that gods are real, far from benign, and gain their power from worship. An amusement park in Japan has become the epicenter of extradimensional intrusions because children worship Hello Kitty, allowing the evil intruders to feed on their quasi-prayer.

The novella isn’t essential to series readers — nothing happens that advances the overall story — but it’s fun. I would recommend it to Stross fans for that reason. Readers who are intrigued by the concept of magic as computational fallout might want to start with the first novel and work their way forward.

RECOMMENDED

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

Published by Tor.com on October 30, 2018

I’m not really into stories about vampires and demons, but Charles Stross is such a good writer that I make an exception for his Laundry Files novels. And while I generally prefer science fiction to fantasy, I have to admit I couldn’t wrap my head around Stross’ Accelerando or Glasshouse, two novels that are acclaimed for their ideas, which are plentiful, although plot and characterization are largely sacrificed for the sake of stuffing the books full of Stross’ notions of what the future might hold. The universe in which the Laundry Files series is set is rich and layered, but Stross also devotes some effort to creating action-adventure plots that are always entertaining.

The novels imagine a British spy agency (the Laundry) that protects the nation from occult threats. Magic is both a weapon and a defense, although the magic is equation-based. The American counterpart (the OPA), sometimes known as the Black Chamber, is not well liked by Laundry operatives (American Postal Inspectors of the occult are more welcome). Early books focused on a character named Bob Howard, but more recent books tend to have ensemble casts. The occult threats grow in number and power with each new novel. The protagonists tend to be vampires who are (sort of) under the British government’s control. At this point, however, the British government is under the control of a dark and sinister power. The Prime Minister has been replaced by an incarnation of the Black Pharaoh, as The Delirium Brief explains in detail. Even darker powers are on the horizon.

The vampire protagonist in The Labyrinth Index is Mhari Murphy. Murphy is working as an executioner for the British government, among her other duties as a highly placed official in New Management. Executions are a necessity because vampires need a blood supply. For dire reasons that earlier novels explain, the Laundry has been officially disbanded but Murphy performs chores as assigned by the new PM.

The PM is convinced (and he might be right) that nonhuman entities are taking over America’s Executive Branch. He assigns Murphy to build a team that will infiltrate the USA and gather intelligence, since the president is no longer answering the phone. He also tasks her with rescuing (e.g., kidnapping) the president, if he is still sufficiently human to be worth the bother. Finding him is complicated by the fact that Americans have blissfully forgotten that they even have a president, creating a void that the forces of evil plan to fill by waking a sleeping god, Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. Murphy does her best with the assistance of other characters, although the PM may have had an ulterior motive for sending her on her mission.

Stross’ smart, tongue-in-cheek prose and the vivid universe he has created are the primary reasons to read these novels. It’s impossible to take this kind of story seriously and Stross wisely relies on humor and action to keep the reader entertained. Murphy telling a demon’s assistant that she demands diplomatic immunity is priceless. Despite all the mayhem, vampire bites, and general nastiness, the ending delivers a sweet little love story. There’s something for everyone in The Labyrinth Index. If you like the series, you’ll probably like this entry.

RECOMMENDED

The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross

Published by Macmillan/Tor.com on July 11, 2017

As a necromancer working for the government’s occult secret service, Bob “Eater of Souls” Howard is not a happy guy. His agency is no longer a secret. He’s been given a new title — Departmental Public Relations Officer — and his first assignment is an interview on Newsnight. His objective is to make his job at the Laundry sound boring. As series readers know, Bob’s job is far from boring. But much to Bob’s consternation, the Laundry is about to be disbanded in order to pave the way for an evil alien takeover, disguised a privatization.

The American Postal Service has been privatized in a conspiracy orchestrated by Nazgûl (a/k/a the Black Chamber a/k/a the Operational Phenomenology Agency) to shut down the Postal Inspector’s Occult Texts Division. The scheme calls for the Laundry to be the next victim of privatization, a plan that is embraced by the Prime Minister, who blames the Laundry for bringing ridicule upon his administration. Of course, it isn’t entirely Howard’s fault that the fight against occult horrors, once largely hidden from public view, gained public attention in The Nightmare Stacks.

After an attempted snatch-and-grab by the entity who calls himself Raymond Schiller — whose mind is now occupied by the sleeping god he awakened — Bob realizes he’s in more danger than usual. Bob’s new mission is to find out what Schiller is up to and to stop him, all without the official help of the Laundry, which on paper no longer exists.

The story turns Bob’s world upside down, forcing him to join forces with the sort of people he usually locks up, including a vampire and the Mandate. When he isn’t preoccupied by evil, he’s preoccupied by love, trying to find a way to stay married to Mo without inadvertently eating her soul. Which, I think, is pretty much a metaphor for marriage.

Eventually the story turns into a furious occult action novel, as various entities wield their various powers while trying to ward off the powers of other entities, all in an effort (depending on the entity’s perspective) to take over the British government or to prevent that from happening. The scheme involves an orgy (the evil worms that take control of Cabinet members are sexually impregnated in their victims), adding some extra chuckles to the novel’s dark humor. But darkness reigns in a world that is very different at the novel’s end, setting up a new and unpleasant reality with which Bob will need to contend in the next installment. That darkness, I suspect, can be taken as a commentary on Brexit.

Charles Stross’ tongue-in-cheek Laundry Files novels are always fun. Stross loves to mock bureaucrats, and The Delirium Brief pokes fun at politicians who supposedly oversee government agencies while doing as little as possible to provide actual oversight. There is more complexity to Laundry novels than is typical of the action-fantasy-horror genre, and Stross’ prose is well above the genre’s standard. The Delirium Brief is another strong entry in an entertaining series.

RECOMMENDED