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Summary: Electrify Your Synapses with Stross' Livewire Lovecraft Show
Review: These two droll, amazing and entertaining stories hopefully herald the start of a cycle of "Laundry" tales. Stross' obsession with science, computers, internet technology, office management structures (!), occult history and HP Lovecraft meshes into a dizzyingly fun reading experience. Somehow, massive exposure to all this information - cleverly turned on its head to meet the demands of the stories - causes synapses to sizzle and crackle, giving rise to an illusory boost of one's own intelligence. Yes, Virginia, reading Stross makes you feel smarter, as others have observed.... This is Must Read stuff for Lovecraft fans, but if you like the work of Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, or Grant Morrison's THE INVISIBLES, then this is more or less guaranteed to flip your wig.
Rating: 
Summary: Stross and MacLeod have created two fantastic tales!
Review: This book was fun and definitely set in the sci-fi classifications of books, if not the fantasy world itself, due to its use of the occult. It would comfortably rest amidst such fantasy classics as "Lord of the Rings", "Harry Potter", and other such works as well as sci-fi and even cyberpunk like "Childhood's End", "Foundation", "Ringworld", "Puppet Masters", "Neuromancer", "Snow Crash", "Cryptonomicon", "Cyber Hunter" and others. Great read.
Rating:
Summary: Stross and MacLeod have created two fantastic tales!
Review: This book was fun and definitely set in the sci-fi classifications of books, if not the fantasy world itself, due to its use of the occult. It would comfortably rest amidst such fantasy classics as "Lord of the Rings", "Harry Potter", and other such works as well as sci-fi and even cyberpunk like "Childhood's End", "Foundation", "Ringworld", "Puppet Masters", "Neuromancer", "Snow Crash", "Cryptonomicon", "Cyber Hunter" and others. Great read.
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Summary: Never Park In A Hilbert Space
Review: What if Alan Turing solved one more problem and completed one last theorem? And suddenly higher mathematics was awash in spells, summonings, and alternate dimensions where forces lived that would like nothing better than to munch on your brain. Thanks to the Turing-Lovecraft theorem magic happens, almost inevitably for the worst.
The British Secret Service (MI-6, the anti-spell branch) has a unique way of dealing with theoreticians who trip over the right formulae - they hire them into The Laundry and retire them to meaningless desk jobs. Bob Howard, however, is a little to itchy for the passive life. After a lot of trying he manages to get into field work. Now, as a relief from an irritating boss who counts paperclips and takes regular attendance, Bob gets to deal with dark forces and demonic possession.
There are two tales in this book. The first is The Atrocity Archives, which was Charles Stross's initial effort. Told as one long computer geek in-joke, the story introduces us to Bob and follows him through his first set of assignments and nervous breakdowns, while a series of ever more peculiar administrators keep telling him what a good job he's doing.
And he is doing a good job. Spotting mathematicians who have crossed the line, saving workshop attendees from being munched, and getting thrown out of the States for poking too far into the badness on what should have been a routine extraction. But even good agents have bad days and our wisecracking hero finds himself going through a portal to rescue a very attractive scientist from a very dead earth.
The second story Concrete Jungle mixes interdepartmental politics, electronic basilisks, and fears about the end of the world in a story of one too many cows.
Intrigued? If you are comfortable with computers, or at least have a handle on geek speak and enjoy twisted, funny writers whose imaginations have run wild, this is something you will want to read. Despite a large serving of sarcasm and irony, Stross also manages to deliver a genuinely interesting plot with as much action as there is esoteric muttering. By all means check this out. I'm going to order everything else he's written.
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