The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3)

by Charles Stross

(He has the heart of a young boy: keeps it in a reliquary under the coffin he sleeps in.)

Life would be so much simpler if our adversaries could be dealt with by supersonic death on the wing - but alas, Human Resources aren’t so easily defeated.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sane employee in possession of his wits must be in want of a good manager.

Unfortunately it’s also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen - it’s invisible and you don’t notice its presence until it’s gone, and then you’re sorry.

The JesusPhone, I swear it is smiling at me: Come to me, come to me and be saved. The luscious curves, the polished glissade of the icons in the multi-touch interface - whoever designed that thing is an intuitive illusionist, I realize fuzzily as my fingertip closes in on the screen: That’s at least a class five glamour.

‘Beware of geeks bearing beer.’

Hospitals are boring places; my advice is to avoid them wherever possible, unless you happen to work there.

‘Bob loses saving throw vs. shiny with a penalty of -5. Bob takes 2d8 damage to the credit card - just how much did it cost? Will you take it back if I guilt-trip you hard enough? Do pigs fly?’

(One of the reasons I am reluctant to carry a handgun in public is that the London Metropolitan Police have a zero-tolerance approach to anyone else carrying guns, and while their specialist firearms teams don’t officially have a shoot-to-kill policy, you try finding a Brazilian plumber who does call-out work during a bomb scare these days.)

That’s the trouble with a defense policy based on occult weapons: the sort of folks who make magic swords can rarely be bothered with the BS 5750 quality certification required by government procurement committees.

The trouble is, you can ignore history - but history won’t necessarily ignore you.

(And it would have been messy, very messy - if old HPL was around today he’d be the kind of blogging and email junkie who’s in everybody’s RSS feed like some kind of giant mutant gossip squid.)

when we spot coincidences we assume there’s an intentional actor behind them - and that’s how we create religions.

We have a rich repertoire of primate behavior which includes the urge to suck up to the big bad alpha male, and a tendency to assume that any intelligence smarter or nastier than we are is the top of the pack hierarchy.

I swear, the doctrinal differences between some of these schismatic churches are fractal

I generally try to avoid funerals: they make me angry. I know the purpose of a funeral is to provide comfort and a sense of closure for the bereaved; and I agree, in principle, that this is generally a good thing. But the default package usually comes with a priest, and when they start driveling on about how Uncle Fred (who died aged sixty-two of a hideous brain tumor) is safe in the ever-loving arms of Jesus, the effect it has on me is not to make me love my creator: it’s to wish I could punch him in the face repeatedly.

To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist. Consequently, I’d much rather dismiss theology and religious belief as superstitious rubbish. My idea of a comforting belief system is your default English atheism . . . except that I know too much.

I live free in an uncaring cosmos, rather than trapped in a clockwork orrery constructed by a cosmic sadist.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Any sufficiently advanced alien intelligence is indistinguishable from God

There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you’ve got, the less shit you have to eat.

Panin puts his glass down and leans back, very slowly, with the extreme self-control of a man who has just realized he is sharing a table with a large, ticking bomb. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

Like I said: the only god I believe in is coming back. And when he arrives, I’ll be waiting with a shotgun.