This is a novel and a short story. The novel is called The Atrocity Archive and the short is called The Concrete Jungle. Having endured Gene Wolfe’s abysmal Cthulhu Mythos story and Jonathan Howard’s mediocre one, I felt like re-reading a better modern take on the Lovecraftian Oeuvre. Actually, I’m currently also working my way through “Necronomicon – the Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft” (which will take me a while being all his Mythos short stories and the short novels to boot in one beautiful edition, but I’d go mad if I tried to just read straight through it, I think). This is, I think, my favourite Stross book. I still rate Glasshouse as his best book, but this is my favourite. Its a wonderful blend of comedy and horror. It’s rather reminiscent of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in juxtaposing the horrors of real life (in this case the Kafka-esque horrors of working for the UK Civil Service) with the beasts from the outermost darkness. With his usual skill, Stross has added a consistent explanation for the ability of the Mythos creatures to do things like possess people’s minds. Things lurk at the bottom of the Mandelbrot Set and mathematics and computation are all that is needed for applied demonology. Combining the myths about Nazi obsessions with the occult (mostly false, but they make a good basis for fiction) with the droll tone of a Len Deighton spy novel, the Atrocity Archive is a dark but immensely funny tale.

The Concrete Jungle “explains” just why there are so many CCTV cameras in the UK (something I’ve struggled to do as part of my work). It’s all so obvious when explained by the story’s protagonist, Bob Howard. The infamous new town of Milton Keynes forms the backdrop to a great short addition to the memoirs of Landry Agent Bob Howard.