The Laundry Series by Charles Stross

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

For now, I am just making this one thread. I am also arbitrarily setting the first book, The Atrocity Archives for January 15.

Now, shall I try to make that date show up of the list of books we are reading here on Goodreads? Probably have to add them to the library to do that. Ideas? Or shall we remember on our own? (I already forgot Julian Comstock.)

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

Thanks, Kate, I plan to join. I am not sure about adding them to group's library - they aren't so to speak cosher for Hugo&Nebula. The series as a whole was nominated in 2019 and 2024, also individual novels were nominated for Locus. See here https://www.sfadb.com/Charles_Stross

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

If you are getting a notice that GR cannot find a comment, it's for this one and the next -- they got too long once I put in all the spoiler tags. And I am annoyed because I HATE previews and I saw too much of the content as I was doing this. Oh, well

Here's the chronological reading order for the Laundry Files.

From Charlie's Website here: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...

All of this below is written by the author, though spaced out and with bold things and comments by me. Also, ignore first two entries as those two British publications were published in the Us in third entry (i.e., first US book):

___________________________

The list is sorted in story order rather than publication order.

The Atrocity Archive (set: 2002; pub: 2002-3)

The short novel which started it all. Originally published in an obscure Scottish SF digest-format magazine called Spectrum SF, it ran from 2002 to 2003, and introduced our protagonist (view spoiler)[ Bob Howard, his (eventual) love interest Mo O'Brien, and a bunch of eccentric minor characters and tentacled horrors. Is a kinda-sorta tribute to spy thriller author Len Deighton. (hide spoiler)]

The Concrete Jungle (set: 2003: pub: see below)

Novella, set a year after The Atrocity Archive, (view spoiler)[ in which Bob is awakened in the middle of the night to go and count the concrete cows in Milton Keynes. (hide spoiler)] Winner of the 2005 Hugo award for best SF/F novella.


Start reading here! The Atrocity Archives (set 2002-03, pub: 2003 (hbk), 2006 (trade ppbk))

This paragraph is about publication, not necessary to read: A smaller US publisher, Golden Gryphon, liked The Atrocity Archive and wanted to publish it, but considered it to be too short on its own. So The Concrete Jungle was written, and along with an afterword they were published together as a two-story collection/episodic novel, The Atrocity Archives (note the added 's' at the end). A couple of years later, Ace (part of Penguin group) picked up the US trade and mass market paperback rights and Orbit published it in the UK. (Having won a Hugo award in the meantime really didn't hurt; it's normally quite rare for a small press item such as TAA to get picked up and republished like this.)


The Jennifer Morgue (set: 2005, pub: 2007 (hbk), 2008 (trade ppbk))

Golden Gryphon asked for a sequel, hence the (view spoiler)[James Bond episode in what was now clearly going to be a trilogy of comedy Lovecraftian/spy books. Note that it's riffing off the Broccoli movie franchise version of Bond, not Iain Fleming's original psychopathic British government assassin. (hide spoiler)] Orbit again took UK rights, while Ace picked up the paperbacks. Because I wanted to stick with the previous book's two-story format, I wrote an extra short story:


Pimpf (set: 2006, pub: collected in The Jennifer Morgue)

A short story set in what I think of as the Chibi-Laundry continuity; (view spoiler)[ Bob ends up inside a computer running a Neverwinter Nights server (hey, this was before World of Warcraft got big). Chibi-Laundry stories are self-parodies and probably shouldn't be thought of as canonical. (Ahem: there's a big continuity blooper tucked away in this one what comes back to bite me in later books because I forgot about it.) (hide spoiler)]


Down on the Farm (novelette: set 2007, pub. 2008, Tor.com)

Novelette: (view spoiler)[ Bob has to investigate strange goings-on at a care home for Laundry agents whose minds have gone. Introduces Krantzberg Syndrome, which plays a major role later in the series. (hide spoiler)]


Equoid (novella: set 2007, pub: 2013, Tor.com)

A novella set between The Jennifer Morgue and The Fuller Memorandum; (view spoiler)[Bob is married to Mo and working for Iris Carpenter. Bob learns why Unicorns are Bad News. (hide spoiler)]Won the 2014 Hugo award for best SF/F novella. Also published as the hardback novella edition Equoid by Subterranean Press.


The Fuller Memorandum (set: 2008, pub: 2010 (US hbk/UK ppbk))

Third novel, first to be published in hardback by Ace, published in paperback in the UK by Orbit. The title is an intentional call-out to Adam Hall (aka Elleston Trevor), author of the Quiller series of spy thrillers—but it's actually an Anthony Price homage. This is where we begin to get a sense that there's an overall Laundry Files story arc, and where I realized I wasn't writing a trilogy. Didn't have a short story trailer or afterword because I flamed out while trying to come up with one before the deadline. (view spoiler)[Bob encounters skullduggery within the organization and has to get to the bottom of it before something really nasty happens: also, what and where is the misplaced "Teapot" that the KGB's London resident keeps asking him about? (hide spoiler)]


Overtime (novelette: set 2009, pub 2009, Tor.com)

A heart-warming (view spoiler)[ Christmas tale of Terror. (hide spoiler)] Shortlisted for the Hugo award for best novelette, 2010.


Three Tales from the Laundry Files (ebook-only collection)

Collection consisting of Down on the Farm, Overtime, and Equoid published by Tor.com as an ebook.

[Stephen]

For some reason I haven’t been able to get into Dead Lies Dreaming, 10th novel in the series and 1st of a new subseries. I liked most of the earlier books. A favorite was The Nightmare Stacks, the 7th novel.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Here's the continuation of the Laundry Files order:

The Apocalypse Codex (set: 2010, pub: 2012 (US hbk/UK ppbk))

Fourth novel, and a tribute to the (view spoiler)[Modesty Blaise comic strip and books by Peter O'Donnell. A slick televangelist is getting much to cosy with the Prime Minister, and the Laundry—as a civil service agency—is forbidden from investigating. We learn about External Assets, and Bob gets the first inkling that he's being fast-tracked for promotion. (hide spoiler)] Won the Locus Award for best fantasy novel in 2013.


A Conventional Boy (set: ~2011-12, pub: 2025 (US hbk/UK hbk))

Interstitial short novel, introducing (view spoiler)[Derek the DM (The Nightmare Stacks), the only prisoner ever to escape from Camp Sunshine (The Delirium Brief) to go to a role playing games convention. Also lifts the curtain on what Iris Carpenter got up to in prison, and gives us a worm's eye view of the Satanic D&D Panic of the 1980s in the Laundryverse. (hide spoiler)]


The Rhesus Chart (set: spring 2013, pub: 2014 (US hbk/UK hbk))

Fifth novel, a new series starting point if you want to bypass the early novels. First of a new cycle remixing (view spoiler)[contemporary fantasy sub-genres (I got bored with British spy thriller authors). Subject: Banking, Vampires, and what happens when an agile programming team inside a merchant bank develops PHANG syndrome. (hide spoiler)]First to be published in hardcover in the UK by Orbit.

Note that the books are now set much closer together. This is a key point: the world of the Laundry Files has now developed its own parallel and gradually diverging history as the supernatural incursions become harder to cover up. (view spoiler)[Note also that Bob is powering up (the Bob of The Atrocity Archive wouldn't exactly be able to walk into a nest of vampires and escape with only minor damage to his dignity). This is why we don't see much of Bob in the next two novels. (hide spoiler)]

The Annihilation Score (set: summer/autumn 2013, pub: 2015 (US hbk/UK ppbk))

Sixth novel, (view spoiler)[first with a non-Bob viewpoint protagonist—it's told by Mo, his wife, and contains spoilers for The Rhesus Chart. Deals with superheroes, mid-life crises, nervous breakdowns, and the King in Yellow. We're clearly deep into ahistorical territory here as we have a dress circle box for the very last Last Night of the Proms, and Orbit's lawyers made me very carefully describe the female Home Secretary as clearly not being one of her non-fictional predecessors, not even a little bit. (hide spoiler)]

Escape from Yokai Land (set: March-April 2014, pub: March 2022, title changed from Escape from Puroland)

Interstitial novella, explaining why (view spoiler)[Bob wasn't around in the UK during the events described in The Nightmare Stacks. He was on an overseas liason mission, nailing down the coffin lid on one of Angleton's left-over toxic waste sites—this time, it's near Tokyo. (hide spoiler)]


The Nightmare Stacks (set: March-April 2014, pub: June 2016 (US hbk/UK ppbk))

Seventh novel, and another series starting point if you want to dive into the most recent books in the series. (view spoiler)[Viewpoint character: Alex the PHANG. Deals with, well ... the Laundry has been so obsessed by CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN that they're almost completely taken by surprise when CASE NIGHTMARE RED happens. Implicitly marks the end of the Masquerade. Features a Maniac Pixie Dream Girl and the return of Bob's Kettenkrad from The Atrocity Archive. Oh, and it also utterly destroys the major British city I grew up in, because revenge is a dish best eaten cold. (hide spoiler)]


The Delirium Brief (set: May-June 2014, pub: June 2017 (US hbk/UK ppbk))

Eighth novel, (view spoiler)[primary viewpoint character: Bob again, but with an ensemble of other viewpoints cropping up in their own chapters. And unlike the earlier Bob books it no longer pastiches other works or genres. Deals with the aftermath of The Nightmare Stacks; opens with Bob being grilled live on Newsnight by Jeremy Paxman and goes rapidly downhill from there. (I'm guessing that if the events of the previous novel had just taken place, the BBC's leading current affairs news anchor might have deferred his retirement for a couple of months ...) (hide spoiler)]


The Labyrinth Index (set: winter 2014/early 2015, pub: October 2018, (US hbk/UK ppbk))

Ninth novel, (view spoiler)[viewpoint character: Mhari, working for the New Management in the wake of the drastic governmental changes that took place at the end of "The Delirium Brief". The shit has well and truly hit the fan on a global scale, and the new Prime Minister holds unreasonable expectations ... (hide spoiler)]


NOT PUBLISHED YET The Regicide Report (set: February-May 2015, pub: due early 2026 (US hbk/UK hbk)) (view spoiler)[Bob is back! And as the Laundry languishes under the rule of the New Management, plots are underway: to overthrow the Black Pharaoh (good) and to poison the monarch (less good). Bob is prompted to ask, "are we the baddies?" more than once as he gets sucked into the gears of a conspiracy to use the sacrifice of the Queen as a necromantic weapon to banish an Elder God.

After the attempted coup in The Regicide Report, the Laundry is finished—it has been purged and replaced by an entire ministry of its own. But The New Management is ongoing and takes a new perspective on life in a very British dystopia. (hide spoiler)]

Dead Lies Dreaming (set: December 2016: pub: Oct 2020 (US hbk/UK hbk))

New spin-off series, new starting point! The marketing blurb describes it as "book 10 in the Laundry Files" but by the time this book is set—(view spoiler)[after CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN and the end of the main Laundry story arc (some time in 2015-16) the Laundry no longer exists. We meet a cast of entirely new characters, civilians (with powers) living under the aegis of the New Management, ruled by his Dread Majesty, the Black Pharaoh. The start of a new series about the New Management, Dead Lies Dreaming riffs heavily off "Peter and Wendy", the original grimdark version of Peter Pan (before Walt Disney made him twee). (hide spoiler)]


Quantum of Nightmares set: December 2016, pub: January 2022 (US hbk/UK ppbk))

Second book in the New Management: (view spoiler)[continues the story, riffs off Sweeney Todd and Mary Poppins—again: the latter was much darker than the Disney musical implies. Eve finds herself at the helm of the Bigge Organization, with an entire conga line of skeletons dancing their way out of various corporate closets, including the scheduled take-over of a supermarket chain that's giving cause for concern. Meanwhile, a new nanny arrives to look after the four children of the official Home Office superhero couple while their parents attend a conference overseas. Sweeney Todd meets Mary Poppins (the original weirdly grim P. L. Travers version, not Disney's grotesque travesty!) (hide spoiler)]


Season of Skulls (set: March 2017 and summer of 1816, pub: May 2023 (US hbk/UK hbk))

Third New Management novel: (view spoiler)[Rupert returns from the dead! Eve is given the unenviable task of reaping his skull for the Black Pharaoh! Which is easier said than done, for Rupert's fiendish plan for revenge starts with a trip through the dream roads into a warped recreation of 1816. Which is how Eve finds herself in a Regency era seaside resort, with spies, shoggoths, and sorcerers. Bridgerton collides with The Prisoner. (hide spoiler)]


Fourth New Management Novel (set: 2019)

Check here for updates on that one some time after January 2026.

[Kalin]

I've been gradually collecting this series when I find them in used bookstores. I've managed to get:
The Jennifer Morgue,
The Fuller Memorandum
The Apocalypse Codex
Escape from Yokai Land
The Delirium Brief
The Labyrinth Index
Quantum of Nightmares
Season of Skulls

So really I just need to find a copy of The Atrocity Archives in order to join for at least the first several months of this BR. I'll start looking for it this fall.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I have suggested times and reading order here . . . perhaps too slow?? We can adjust later, of course.

Some months are shared because of novelettes and novellas

reading
month . . . . . . . . . title.
January . . . . . The Atrocity Archives (incl The Concrete Jungle)
February . . . . The Jennifer Morgue (incl Pimpf)
March-April . Down on the Farm-novelette
March-April . Equoid-novella
March-April . The Fuller Memorandum-novel
March-April . Overtime-novelette
May . . . . . . . . The Apocalypse Codex
June . . . . . . . A Conventional Boy
July . . . . . . . The Rhesus Chart
August-Sept . The Annihilation Score
August-Sept . Escape from Yokai Land
August-Sept . The Nightmare Stacks
October . . . . . The Delirium Brief
November . . . . The Labyrinth Index
December . . . The Regicide Report 
Jan 2027 . . . . Dead Lies Dreaming
Feb 2027 . . . . Quantum of Nightmares
Mar 2027 . . . . Season of Skulls

Discuss??

I note that January, 2027 is when we start the alternate version "New Management". Synchronicity, anyone??

Also note that The Regicide Report has an expected publication date of 27 Jan 26, so there's that - - according to the list above, we are reading it almost a year after publication, so fingers crossed it'll be out

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

I'll have to start them to be sure, but I guess they are fast reads, so times can be condensed

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

I also wonder if it is OK to discuss them here. I remember that someone had a problem with all the short story discussion cluttering up the group, and so we created ORBIT for short story reading. Will enough of us be reading this that there won't be a problem?

Maybe not too bad if we keep it in one thread??

Discuss.

[Kalin]

I remember when some in the group did a buddy read of The Expanse at the rate of one novel per month. That wasn't bad at all in terms of notifications for people not participating. The multiple short story threads were a different beast altogether. If we stick to reading one novel, or having one thread, per month, I don't think there's an issue.

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

Kateblue wrote: "Maybe not too bad if we keep it in one thread??
.."

I agree with that.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

Me too.

[Allan]

I will participate & I’m good with the approach.

[Kimberly]

I will join in and am good with this plan.

[Kateblue, 2nd star to the right and straight on til morning]

OK. Because the individual books will not show up in one thread, we will not get calendar reminders from GR, nor will we get our ratings showing by our names. Therefore:

1) after we read the first two or three, we should decide if we speed up, and,
2) we need to tell each other up front after we finish a book how we are rating it in your post since it will not automatically show our ratings

Also, don't forget to use spoilers. :-)

Right now I have #1, The Atrocity Archives, on my personal electronic calendar for January 15. All participants please do likewise.

Ta ta for now.