★★★★★ Magic is a branch of Applied Mathematics

The Atrocity Archives

Charles Stross

Charles Stross' Laundry Files is my all-time favorite Science Fiction series. I call it "Science Fiction" rather than "Fantasy" because of Clarke's Third Law. The only difference between magic and technology is mystery. Your cell phone is not magic because there is no real mystery about it. It was designed by human engineers who intended it to do what it does (bugs excepted), and we (collectively, if not individually) understand how it works. There is no actual magic in the Laundry Files because there is no mystery. Rather, what we call magic is a technology. As our first-person narrator Bob Howard explains

The [Turing] theorem is a hack on discrete number theory that simultaneously disproves the Church-Turing hypothesis (wave if you understood that) and worse, permits NP-complete problems to be converted into P-complete ones. This has several consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms—translation: all your bank account are belong to us—and ending with the ability to computationally generate a Dho-Nha geometry curve in real time.

This latter item is just slightly less dangerous than allowing nerds with laptops to wave a magic wand and turn them into hydrogen bombs at will. Because, you see, everything you know about the way this universe works is correct—except for the little problem that this isn’t the only universe we have to worry about. Information can leak between one universe and another. And in a vanishingly small number of the other universes there are things that listen, and talk back—see Al-Hazred, Nietzsche, Lovecraft, Poe, et cetera. The many-angled ones, as they say, live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set, except when a suitable incantation in the platonic realm of mathematics—computerised or otherwise—draws them forth.

What is remarkable about this explanation of the magic system of the Laundry Files is that it makes sense. To the uninitiated it reads like the nonsense technobabble you hear in Star Trek or a Marvel movie, but in truth it is quite different. Almost every word of this explanation makes sense. In fact, it makes much more sense than most science fiction, let alone fantasy.

In this regard the Laundry Files is unique, in my experience. The only other similar Speculative Fiction that I know of that uses some of these ideas is Neal Stephenson's Anathem, but it is far less thoroughly worked out there. The Laundry Files is technologically knowledgeable throughout. For instance, in The Atrocity Archives there is a discussion of how to disable a thermonuclear bomb. If you understand how H-bombs work, you will recognize that this very technical discussion makes sense.

It is also very funny, for math-major values of fun. Bob Howard is an excellent hero. Later in the series we have other first-person narrators, who are sometimes less fun than Bob.

You've figured out already that this series is not for everyone. You will find the reviews of Laundry Files to be all over the map, and now you know why.

The Atrocity Archives introduces us to Bob Howard, and to Doctor Dominique (Mo) O'Brien, a character who will become very important in future novels -- she comes into her own more fully in the second novel The Jennifer Morgue. The Atrocity Archives also explains the magic technology of the series and much of its history.

In this book the novel The Atrocity Archives is followed by the novella The Concrete Jungle, which introduces a magical technology, Scorpion Stare, that will be important in subsequent books and stories. It also gives Bob another chance to play reluctant action hero.

If you're scientifically or mathematically literate, Bob Howard and the Laundry Files are tremendous fun.

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