By Chris Taylor.
‘I asked why we had to leave the EU, in one of those informal breakout sessions at Number 10. … “Can’t bring back the death penalty without ditching the ECHR,” he replied. “Also, we need to get rid of free movement. Stop the blighters emigrating.” I couldn’t help myself. “Why the death penalty?” I persisted. He fixed me with a quelling stare. “There haven’t been enough human sacrifices of late, as you should know.”’
The Labyrinth Index – Charles Stross (2018)
This year, one of the finest series of urban fantasy/horror reaches its conclusion, 22 years after it began.
Ironically (given the subject matter) it’s a bit of a cult series. You might not have heard of it but I promise there are plenty of die hard fans out here – and I’d love to welcome you into the inner circle…
Charles Stross’ Laundry Files comprises of 10 novels, starting with 2004’s The Atrocity Archives and ending this year with The Regicide Report. There are also various novellas, prequels, and a spin-off trilogy set a few years later known as The New Management. We may yet see more books set in the world, but The Regicide Report is the ‘final’ book of the official Laundry Files.
The books primarily follow computer whizz(ard) (sorry) Bob Howard, charting the activities of the branch of MI5 known as The Laundry, who are tasked with preventing looming cosmic-horror apocalypses, which you’ll be familiar with if you’ve ever read Lovecraft. The novels seamlessly blend slick techno-spy thriller, beautifully realised eldritch horror, and sharp, dry British bureaucratic satire. Is the biggest threat to your sanity the cultists of an Elder Gods trying to murder you, the demonic parasite gnawing at your brain, or the stress of the paperwork and disciplinary debriefing?
The premise of the series is that magic is based on mathematics: geometry, patterns, equations. With the rise of the computer age, magical power has stopped being restricted by a person’s ability to do this kind of thing in their heads (which leads to your sanity being nibbled slowly by abominable creatures that slither out of deeper dimensions when you play with dangerous maths). Computers can do it better and more accurately. But an increase in the use of powerful magic is ultimately bringing the world closer to a situation where something awful and betentacled will take notice.
The Laundry are an intelligence agency tasked with handling anything that might advance this scenario, whether it’s a cult actively summoning an undead pharaoh, or someone accidentally giving themselves powers. At the same time, The Laundry is riddled with the same kind of bureaucracy that affects any government organisation.
Each novel is framed as a record kept by Bob of a mission of importance, making each book episodic. This lets Stross inject a good dose of wit into the storytelling without detracting from the thrills or horror; in British fashion, often the characters cope with their experiences using sarcasm, frustration, or self-depreciation, but the stories are told with such a personal voice that you can feel how strained they become.
Stross will sometimes insert third person omniscient chapters, framed as ‘information I found out later’ by the narrator; this is a unique narrative feature granted by the central concept, and often serves to ramp up the pace, especially in later books with more complex plot strands.
Woven into this is clever social and political commentary. Stross is primarily a sci-fi author, so he works less in fantasy allegory and more in holding up a mirror and asking ‘Well, what if?’. Whether it’s bureaucracy, economy, politics, tech bros, cults of personality, the environment, or refugees, Stross presents situations that challenge our values without ever feeling like a direct comparison to current affairs.
One novel, for example, is clearly influenced by the refugee crisis, but instead of just making an allusion about innocent people running for their lives, we have a supernatural race of psychopathic creatures who want to annex Yorkshire. Yes, they’re on the run from a terrible disaster, but they’re organised, deadly, and launching a magical invasion. The novel still challenges our perception of race, ethnicity, amnesty, and patriotism, but in a way that’s intended to ask what your values are in the face of a real question, not just preach to you about something that’s obviously right or wrong.
Episodic fantasy/horror often suffers from artificial ‘power creep’: each threat has to be worse than the last to keep the consumer engaged, and it’s often not explained well in-universe. A good example is the TV show Supernatural, where the Winchesters start barely able to fight a single demon, and by the end have faced-down armies of hell, Lucifer, and heaven, with most of the same tools. But Stross embraces this power creep and justifies it from the start: the core concept is that magic is advancing alongside technology, and building gradually to an apocalypse-level event.
On this note, reality itself has become crazier over the past decade. The stakes need to escalate in each book for the horror-satire to stay elevated above the horror of reality. In 2010, it was fantastical enough for minor politicians to be in league with Elder Gods, and for back-room bankers to accidentally create forbidden incantations in a stock market algorithm. In 2026, we’re faced every day by cults and conspiracies led by everyone from celebs to heads of state, so it needs to get more farcical.
This lets Stross drive each novel forwards in surprising and fresh ways. The books start, like most urban fantasy, with the organisation hidden in the shadows, stopping things before they become public. But as we get to 2016 and reality starts getting weird, the books also take a turn. It’s hard to explain without spoilers, but the world of the last few books becomes a terrifying place, with magic becoming public, security becoming defunded, key figures being replaced by cosmic threats, and the US going dark because of internal forces conflicting for the ‘good’ of the country.
It’s horrifyingly fantastical and horrifyingly relatable at the same time. And it’s not surprising that the frequency of novels began to ramp up in 2014.
If you’re looking for a new, complete series that blends slick spycraft and techno-thriller with Lovecraftian horror and Harry Dresden style magical investigation, all wrapped up by the British satire of Chris Brookmyre or Douglas Adams, there’s no better time to get started with The Atrocity Archive. If you’re already a fan, The Regicide Report was released on 26th January: make sure you pick up the final outing with Bob and Mo.
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