Review: 'The Concrete Jungle' by Charles Stross

[coalescent]

First there was The Atrocity Archive: Charles Stross' first published novel, serialised in the pages of Spectrum SF in late 2001 and early 2002. The Atrocity Archive introduced us to The Laundry, that very secret branch of the civil service that deals with the occult. It also introduced us to the somewhat cynical Bob Howard (70% spook, 30% tech support) and told the story of his first field assignment, a mission that involved a beautiful, red-haired professor and some extra-dimensional leftovers from the Third Reich.

It was also a lot of fun; a Lovecraftian spy thriller told in a geek idiom. You got the most out of it if you enjoyed exchanges such as "Am I making myself clear?" "Yes, for very bureaucratic values of clear", or if you grinned when you read over-elaborately euphemistic but nonetheless very particular descriptions such as "An indeterminate but nonzero number of semifull vodka glasses later...", or if (unlike me) you had the programming background to get the more esoteric jokes - but really, anyone who's worked in an office could appreciate the corporate madness at the heart of The Laundry.

This year Golden Gryphon released a cunningly-pluralised book, The Atrocity Archives, that contains the original novel plus an introduction by Ken Macleod plus an afterword by Stross plus, most excitingly of all, a follow-up novella called 'The Concrete Jungle'.

Having passed around my copies of Spectrum SF to an indeterminate but nonzero number of people on my friendslist, and knowing that most of them greatly enjoyed The Atrocity Archive, I don't want to spoil the new story too much. It seems only fair, though, to give those people advance warning that I might be thrusting a small (though high-quality) hardback in their direction in the near future.

'The Concrete Jungle' is set a short while after The Atrocity Archive, and integrates the backstory with a thoroughly 21st-century menace. Bob is now the guy that the higher-ups go to if they want someone to, say, count the number of concrete cows in Milton Keynes at four in the morning. This initial investigation is interspersed with a series of increasingly classified files from The Laundry's archives that describe the twentieth-century history of research into gorgonism. Sufferers of this quantum-mechanical medical condition gain the ability to turn a certain percentage of carbon atoms in anything they look at into highly electropositive slilcon ions...a process which, as you might guess, is usually terminal for the recipient of the gaze.

Unsurprisingly, gorgonism turns out to be involved in the case of the concrete cows. There's more to the situation than meets the eye, though. How exactly it becomes a national security issue is the bit that I don't want to spoil; but suffice it to say that, however unlikely this may seem up front, it involves another almost-unique aspect of Milton Keynes, as well as such concerns as the impact of networks and of non-open software standards.

The new novella doesn't have the shock-of-the-new that the inspired backround for The Atrocity Archive provides, and the focus of the story is different: more internal, less external. I don't necessarily think these are weaknesses, however. In fact, I would say that all in all 'The Concrete Jungle' is at least as much fun as, and arguably more thought-provoking than, the original novel.

Comments

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

I trust that you've read Stross' "A Colder War" and my pastiche thereof.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I had! Didn't know it was you that wrote that, of course...it's good, though.

I like 'A Colder War' a lot, but it's not really the same type of thing as The Atrocity Archives. The main difference is the tone; ACW is much, much darker. Not that TAA doesn't have its serious moments, but ACW is just an altogether different style.

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

The Atrocity Archives is certainly on my list of books to read. Unfortunately, it might take a while for me to get to it - I've only read one work of fiction so far this year (Clute's Appleseed). My Lal-pile of novels is getting pretty scary!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

My balance is skewed the other way; I read little or no non-fiction. It's something I keep meaning to start correcting - I like learning new things, dammit - but never seem to get around to doing so. The fiction always floats to the top of the pile.

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

I do most of my reading on the bus to and from work now, and I find that I can't read fiction when subject to frequent interruptions. What reading time I get at home tends to be devoted to proper physics or compsci books. I imagine that sooner or later I'll decide I've learned an adequate amount of computer science and the balance may well swing back towards fiction. If that happens, I'll probably go back to reading a novel every few days.