The Atrocity Archives (2004)

[mcity]

Stories written by geeks tend to have a higher amount of references than most. Shout outs in fanfics are pretty much expected, but they tend to crop up in original fiction as well. For example, open your copy of "The Color of Magic".

Where's yours?

Over four thousand miles away, and shut up, Rhetorical Device.

Those first two guys on the road are pastiches of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, tow famous fantasy novel characters you've never heard of. The very first characters we hear in Discworld about are from another series entirely.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. In that case, the characters are from the genre under parody, so their presence there makes sense. And there are load of refs in DW, most slipped in so artfully that you might not notice them. Given that most fanfic writers haven't been knighted for their writing, it tends to be a bit clumsier. Every time I read "I'll be in my bunk" in, say, a Harry Potter fanfic, I wince on the inside.

Which brings me to Charles Stross and "The Atrocity Archive". By volume, the book has more references than Shinji and Warhammer 40K. And it may be entirely justified.

Our narrator, Bob Howard, is the type of semi-hapless protagonist destined to be played by Simon Pegg. Several years ago, he was working with some advanced mathmatics and computer theories, and nearly wiped out a good portion of the midlands. Turns out math and computers can summon Things, and Bob finds himself working for Capital Laundry Services, the arm of the British government that deals with the supernatural, and is assigned a job in tech support and computational demonology. The pay is poor, the hours irregular, and the work soul-threatening.

In case you couldn't guess, he's a geek. Hence all the references. The question is whether they're in there because of Bob's character, or Stross's. I try and hold down my Shout Outs myself, but since Stross actually used to work in tech support himself, he seems to feel no such restraint. It doesn't exactly enhance or detract from the book, it's just...there.

The book itself is pretty good, though. Bob has a magic PDA, and the story reads like a "stale beer" spy novel with tentacles in. He's a wizard, not a fighter, and tries to keep his head down. Stross uses several historical events for background flavoring.

Caveat: It's downright opaque if you're not a geek or a nerd. You know how a lot of science fiction/fantasy fans seem to bristle at the implication that their choice of genre is less worthy than "serious" literature? Stross writes geeky sci-fan and doesn't afraid of anybody. If you want a story by Stross with several of the same themes, read "A Colder War".