★★★★☆ Mad sorcerers

Down on the Farm

Charles Stross

Sorcerers go mad. In Charles Stross's LaundryVerse they suffer from K-syndrome (Krantzberg-Godel Spongiform Encephalopathy), a disease that results from running invocations on the neural hardware in your brain, in contrast with the safe practices of modern computational demonologists such as Bob Howard, who use electronic computers. ("Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of." -- Arthur Dent.)

Mad sorcerers are a problem. You can't just give them a pension, even with generous health care. Compared to a mad sorcerer, a thermonuclear warhead is no more than a minor annoyance. Mad sorcerers need to be protected from themselves, and we need to be protected from them. Unknown to Bob, the Laundry has a facility, "St Hilda of Grantham’s Home For Disgruntled Waifs And Strays" (as Bob eventually remarks, "most of them aren’t so much disgruntled as demonically possessed"), for mad sorcerers.

Word of trouble at St Hilda's comes to the Laundry, and Bob's supervisor Andy sends Bob to look into it. Andy has visited St Hilda's in previous years, and it is dangerous to visit St Hilda's more than once, at least if you intend to leave the second time. Thus Bob, low man on the totem pole, gets the job. Bob's challenge is to identify the problem, fix it, and get out with an intact, functioning brain. It's a good story, and becomes important to the later development of the Laundry Files.

Down on the Farm was first published in 2008. It's a short story, or perhaps what the Hugo Awards call a novelette. It was recently reprinted along with Overtime (another Laundry Files short) along with the novella A Conventional Boy.

Down on the Farm on Amazon

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