Charles Stross: The Jennifer Morgue

[sparkchaser]

In The Jennifer Morgue we learn that not only are Lovecraft's monsters and mythos real, but magic is just applied high-level mathematics. Bob Howard learned these facts when an equation he was working on almost summoned something from the multiverse and now he works for The Laundry, a British secret agency whose mission is to keep the baddies out and the general population unaware of The Truth. Each country in the EU and in most of the rest of the world has its own version of The Laundry.

Bob is sent as a replacement for the regular representative to monthly meeting of the EU agencies and soon finds himself involved in a scenario straight out of a 007 novel involving the Deep Ones, a secret Cold War era deep sea recovery mission, and a software magnate.

Charles Stross's wit in writing reminds me of the British greats: Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and Neil Gaiman.

The Laundry collects computer scientists who stumble across the elements of computational demonology in much the same way that Stalin used to collect jokes about himself (about two Gulags full). About six years ago I nearly landscaped Wolverhampton, not to mention most of Birmingham and the Midlands, while experimenting with a really neat, new rendering algorithm that just might have accidentally summoned up the entity known to the clueful as '****, it's Nyarlathotep! Run!' (and to everyone else as '****, run!')

I cannot recommend this book highly enough to the fans of Lovecraft.