(10) CHARLES STROSS –

LAUNDRY FILES (2004-2023)

 

“I wish I was still an atheist. Believing I was born into a harsh, uncaring cosmos – in which my existence was a random roll of the dice and I was destined to die and rot and then be gone forever – was infinitely more comforting than the truth. Because the truth is that my God is coming back. When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun. And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.”

 

Great Cthulhu in the Cold War!

One of my favorite SF short stories is Stross’ A Colder War, which is something of a precursor to the Laundry series, albeit in an alternative universe. What would have happened if the Antarctic expedition in H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” actually happened in our world? In short, nothing good – or a fate worse than global thermonuclear annihilation.

What ensues is a Cold War arms race, but with extra-dimensional entities instead of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union has its ultimate doomsday ace – or rather joker – in the hole in the form of a particular entity based on captured Nazi research into a certain underwater city. The United States has its own contingency plan in the form of 300 megatons of nuclear weapons, and when that fails, a backup contingency plan or insanely desperate last resort. There are worse things than death in the Cthulhu Mythos…

His Laundry series ups the ante on his use of the Lovecraftian horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. Commencing with the first book (and still my favorite), The Atrocity Archives, extradimensional entities of evil serve as the backdrop of a secret history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, espionage and government bureaucracy – all combined in the British spy agency known as the Laundry. Magic is simply higher mathematics – which applied in certain circumstances can open gates to other dimensions. The protagonist, a computer expert known as Bob Howard, unintentionally did just that and found himself conscripted by the Laundry, Britain’s occult secret service. Unfortunately, incidents like it are becoming increasingly common with the increasing computational power and mathematical applications of the modern world (and of human minds) – indeed, the Laundry anticipates this increase (amongst other things, such as the position of our world in space) will inevitably align or open up our world to other dimensions (“when the stars are right” in the parlance of the Mythos) and has contingency plans for extradimensional invasion. Of course, the Laundry is not exactly optimistic about humanity’s prospects – its usual best-case scenario is for repopulation after an extinction event – but it plans to go down swinging…

 

FANTASY & HORROR

 

Yes – this is one of my SF entries that obviously overlaps with fantasy…and cosmic horror.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

“Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.” – Rod Serling.

Counting down my Top 10 SF Books – running parallel to my Top 10 Fantasy Books, and for matter, my Top 10 Literature, in that this is my Top 10 SF Literature or my top 10 written works of science fiction  As I noted for my Top 10 Fantasy Books, comics tend to be fantasy or SF – at least the ones I like – but I have a separate Top 10 Comics list. Similarly, I like many fantasy or SF films or TV series, but they have their own top ten lists.

But what is science fiction? And what is it as opposed to fantasy – with which it has so many overlaps, not least in pop cultural niche (or “ghetto”)?

Just as magic is often seen as or argued to be the defining feature of fantasy, so too are science and technology for science fiction, only even more so. After all, it’s called science fiction – it’s in the very name of the genre!

And yes – I would argue that science or technology is the defining feature of science fiction even beyond magic is for fantasy. While not common, there are fantasy works that have low or no magic – it is harder to think of science fiction works without technology or at least science in their plot or premise.

Essentially, if one were to attempt as comprehensive a definition of science fiction as possible, that might be to propose it as the imaginative or speculative extrapolation of science, technology or society. In other words, the fiction of asking what if?

However, as I noted for fantasy, fictional genres can be notoriously difficult to define or difficult to distinguish from other fictional genres, with the two looming largest – and closest – to science fiction being fantasy and horror, with all three often being classed within the category of speculative fiction.

As I did for my Top 10 Fantasy Books, I will note where fantasy or horror loom large or close to the science fiction for my entries. Indeed, I will make one such note now – one of the quirks of my Top 10 SF Books is that it includes four entries for what might better be classified as posthumous fantasy or fantasy set in the afterlife, because they happen to be my favorite books by authors whom I otherwise like for their science fiction.

And just as the fantasy genre could be divided between high fantasy (as the core of the genre) and low fantasy, so too the science fiction genre can be divided up into hard SF (similarly as the core of the genre) and soft SF.

Hard SF tends to have its focus in the science part of science fiction and in turn relies on either established science or careful extrapolation from it. Its counterpart of soft SF does, well, less so – often being more fantastic in its plot or premise. TV Tropes has some fun with this with its Moh’s Scale of Science Fiction Hardness.

Again, these distinctions or subgenres within science fiction fascinate me as much as the distinctions between SF and other genres – and yes, SF sub-genres are worthy of their own top ten.

Anyway, these are my Top 10 SF Books.