Stross

Subject: Stross
Author: Thoth
Posted on: 2020-12-31 02:30:37 UTC

My favorite sci-fi author nobody talks about is probably Charles Stross, Who is... interesting. Stross writes science fiction focused on technology, but from an insider's perspective and with a distinctly bizarre twist of his own. His science fantasy series, The Merchant Princes, explores a similar sort of concept to Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's The Long Earth: infinite parallel worlds. But in this setting, they're inhabited by numerous societies at different levels of development, and only a small subset of people can jump between them... taking whatever they're carrying. Naturally, anyone who can jump between worlds has tremendous power: Drugs can be sent through a world where there's no DEA, they can charge through the nose for modern medicine in a feudal world, or similarly exorbitant rates to offer more primitive worlds the power of FedEx shipping. His novels Rule 34 and Halting State are about cybercrime in the near future. Other books of his take on themes of the singularity and transhumanism, like Accelerando, a dark family saga set during the development of the singularity told from the perspective of a robot cat, and Rapture of the Nerds, a decidedly surrealist work written in collaboration with fellow sci-fi author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow.

But none of these are my favorite things he's done. That would be The Laundry Files.

The Laundry Files is series rooted in a few key observations. 1) Clarke's Third Law isn't and hasn't been theory for a very long time: Technology is magic, right now, and computing has more than its fair share of similarities to wizardry. 2) The natural fit for computing in magic is contract magic, which, as it involves making contracts with some kinds of magical entities, is inherently spooky, and a good fit for horror. 3) If there were, hypothetically, top secret government organization dedicated to occult intelligence and keeping knowledge of the occult secret, working for it would probably involve a lot of boring paperwork and annoying bureaucracy. Less Ian Flemming, more John Le Carre.

Thus was born The Laundry Files, an unholy mashup of Len Deighton, Neil Stephenson, and H.P. Lovecraft (and that's in the author's own words). The many-angled ones are at the bottom of Sierpinski triangle, Cthulhu is at the other end of your internet connection, and a group of underpaid civil servants are all that stands between England and tentacled monstrosities from another dimension. The novels, at least early on, follow Bob Oliver Francis Howard (a pseudonym of his own choosing: He wasn't allowed to take the codename ONFGNEQ(rot13) OPERATOR...), former network administrator, current Laundry field agent, and card-carrying geek. On of the many eventual strengths of the series is a huge and diverse cast that's strong enough to carry novels on their own: there are an increasing number of Laundry Files books where Bob's not even the protagonist at all. But from the start the series has a well-defined personality, with the grimy mundane boredom of working in IT written by someone who very much seems to have lived it: this isn't the kind of story that William Gibson, who more used computers for flavoring, would tell, because so much of it is rooted in the experience of actual computing and nightmarish office work. Oh, and equally boring spy work. The first novel even has a fairly clear explanation of the mechanics of Laundryverse "magic" in a short paragraph that is easily missable if you're not up on stuff (TL;DR: P=NP, Church-Turing is false, and solving the right equation can send information through the multiverse to powerful entities who will happily punch a hole in reality).

...Which is sort of an issue with the first Laundry novel (which is really a novel and an extra novella...). It's a little too technical for its own good, and might convince you that need to know all the technical and cultural references to get into the series. You emphatically don't. That's the rich sugary coating atop the fundamental storytelling, and you don't need any of it at all to enjoy the spy thriller, office comedy, or cosmic horror elements.

Just... read it. It's good.

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Four great sci-fi books you might not have read by Mirage Fontane on 2020-12-27 19:08:01 UTC Plug Reply

When it comes to sci-fi, you can't get around the Herberts and the Heinleins, the Asimovs and the Philip K. Dicks. But there are plenty of lesser-known amazing stories out there that deserve recognition just as much. I used to think that fantasy was my domain rather than sci-fi, but the more spacefaring stories I read the more convinced I am that I was wrong. I'm getting way into sci-fi these days, so I thought I'd bring a few of my lesser-known favorites to the table, as well as ask for more recs.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

I'm a huge fan of Okorafor's short story Spider the Artist, which is a real gem of speculative storytelling, a tale of a friendship between an abused woman in a destitute African village and a Zombie. Binti is also rather short, a novella rather than a novel, but it's enchanting. The heroine, Binti, is a teenage Himba girl (the Himba people are a Namibian tribe) whose life changes forever when she gets admitted to an offplanet university for her genius mathematical skills; but on the way to Oomza University she gets swept up in a conflict between humans and an alien species. It's a story with both hopeful and surprisingly bleak moments and some wonderful worldbuilding that feels complete even in its shortness, but it's also the first in a series of stories I plan on reading as soon as I can.

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach

This book is both a novel and a short story collection about a forgotten world, bleak, heartbreaking, hopeful and human. Each story paints a picture about the social structure and history of a planet where people make intricate carpets out of the hair of their wives and daughters to present as tribute to... well, I won't say who or why, but the stories all come together in the end to form a resolution you definitely won't see coming. Each short story works perfectly on its own as well, but special mention goes to The Palace of Tears (might be a different title in English, I'd read this in Hungarian) that's one of the most gutwrenching things I've ever read. And I mean that as the highest compliment.

The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison

This one's a bit of a classic in its own right, a light, funny spacefaring adventure about the galaxy's greatest conman, Slippery Jim diGriz. I'm usually not a fan of the criminal mastermind type, but Jim diGriz is a wonderful character: deeply human, very smart, not modest in the slightest, with a great sense of humor that often had me laughing out loud, a talent for mind games, and a twisty but firm sense of morality. It's a short novel, barely 150 pages, so I won't spoil the plot, but there's plenty of crime and adventure for anyone who likes those; in many ways it's the product of its time (it came out in '81), but it's a great deal of fun and a very refreshing afternoon read.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Leaving my favorite for last. This novel's definitely not for everyone: it's a very unique bit of military sci-fi with deep, complicated worldbuilding and a tinge of sci-fantasy. The story takes place in a world where the calendar system in use and the religious beliefs can shape and alter reality together with mathematics; since this requires a completely uniform way of thinking, any deviation from the Hexarchate (the ruling government)'s set of rules gets seriously punished. The plot itself is about an infantry captain, Kel Cheris, getting tasked with recapturing a strategically important fortress from rebels; to achieve this she gets mind-linked to the ghost of Shuos Jedao, a great Hexarchate general - and a traitor and mass murderer. Without spoiling too much, the character dynamics are fantastic, the space battles are explosive, high octane and absolutely merciless, the political intrigue is well-plotted, and the worldbuilding is exquisite. Some Hungarian readers hated this book because the world of the Hexarchate is very dense and hard to get into at first, but for sci-fi fans I really can't recommend this one enough. I think I can sum up my opinion by quoting a Hungarian book reviewer: "after I finished this book, even while weeding the lavender I was thinking about General Jedao".

What are your lesser known sci-fi recs? I'm always looking to expand my horizons, so I'd love to hear about your favorite authors or stories.

Stross by Thoth on 2020-12-31 02:30:37 UTC Reply

My favorite sci-fi author nobody talks about is probably Charles Stross, Who is... interesting. Stross writes science fiction focused on technology, but from an insider's perspective and with a distinctly bizarre twist of his own. His science fantasy series, The Merchant Princes, explores a similar sort of concept to Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's The Long Earth: infinite parallel worlds. But in this setting, they're inhabited by numerous societies at different levels of development, and only a small subset of people can jump between them... taking whatever they're carrying. Naturally, anyone who can jump between worlds has tremendous power: Drugs can be sent through a world where there's no DEA, they can charge through the nose for modern medicine in a feudal world, or similarly exorbitant rates to offer more primitive worlds the power of FedEx shipping. His novels Rule 34 and Halting State are about cybercrime in the near future. Other books of his take on themes of the singularity and transhumanism, like Accelerando, a dark family saga set during the development of the singularity told from the perspective of a robot cat, and Rapture of the Nerds, a decidedly surrealist work written in collaboration with fellow sci-fi author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow.

But none of these are my favorite things he's done. That would be The Laundry Files.

The Laundry Files is series rooted in a few key observations. 1) Clarke's Third Law isn't and hasn't been theory for a very long time: Technology is magic, right now, and computing has more than its fair share of similarities to wizardry. 2) The natural fit for computing in magic is contract magic, which, as it involves making contracts with some kinds of magical entities, is inherently spooky, and a good fit for horror. 3) If there were, hypothetically, top secret government organization dedicated to occult intelligence and keeping knowledge of the occult secret, working for it would probably involve a lot of boring paperwork and annoying bureaucracy. Less Ian Flemming, more John Le Carre.

Thus was born The Laundry Files, an unholy mashup of Len Deighton, Neil Stephenson, and H.P. Lovecraft (and that's in the author's own words). The many-angled ones are at the bottom of Sierpinski triangle, Cthulhu is at the other end of your internet connection, and a group of underpaid civil servants are all that stands between England and tentacled monstrosities from another dimension. The novels, at least early on, follow Bob Oliver Francis Howard (a pseudonym of his own choosing: He wasn't allowed to take the codename ONFGNEQ(rot13) OPERATOR...), former network administrator, current Laundry field agent, and card-carrying geek. On of the many eventual strengths of the series is a huge and diverse cast that's strong enough to carry novels on their own: there are an increasing number of Laundry Files books where Bob's not even the protagonist at all. But from the start the series has a well-defined personality, with the grimy mundane boredom of working in IT written by someone who very much seems to have lived it: this isn't the kind of story that William Gibson, who more used computers for flavoring, would tell, because so much of it is rooted in the experience of actual computing and nightmarish office work. Oh, and equally boring spy work. The first novel even has a fairly clear explanation of the mechanics of Laundryverse "magic" in a short paragraph that is easily missable if you're not up on stuff (TL;DR: P=NP, Church-Turing is false, and solving the right equation can send information through the multiverse to powerful entities who will happily punch a hole in reality).

...Which is sort of an issue with the first Laundry novel (which is really a novel and an extra novella...). It's a little too technical for its own good, and might convince you that need to know all the technical and cultural references to get into the series. You emphatically don't. That's the rich sugary coating atop the fundamental storytelling, and you don't need any of it at all to enjoy the spy thriller, office comedy, or cosmic horror elements.

Just... read it. It's good.

I've heard about him! by Mirage Fontane on 2020-12-31 23:30:04 UTC Reply

I've heard... things about The Laundry Files' Hungarian translation (I rarely read translated stuff nowadays because it tends to go sideways even with really good books - the translation of Ninefox Gambit was a spectacular disaster), but I've also heard that it's a pretty good series. It's actually Accelerando I've put on my TBR list just recently, but if you recommend this series as well, I shall put it on the List too. Although I'm trying to read more queer authors, women and authors of color this year (call that my New Year's resolution), so I'm not sure when I'll get to it. So many books, so little time...

Given your taste for horror I must recommend them. (nm) by Thoth on 2020-12-31 23:58:36 UTC Reply