The Regicide Report Brings The Laundry Files to a (Mostly) Satisfying Conclusion
Reflecting on Charles Stross' best (IMHO) series
When I first encountered Charles Stross’ work, I didn’t particularly want to like ir. Charlie, after all, is sort of a Trotskyite commie pinko neo-pagan or maybe something even worse.
But lord, can he write. In a genre dominated by hacks he was—and remains--one of the few intelligent and fresh voices around.
So, I quickly came to mostly agree with what Christian fantasy writer Theodore Beale had to say about Stross:
Let’s see, I’m not at all in sync with his religion, his politics or his personal aesthetic, so why am I recommending his site? Only because he is, in my opinion, the most interesting and important writer in science fiction today.1 The Accelerando collection simply blew me away, combining insightful, intelligent views on economics, technology and politics with a light but razor-sharp style in a thoroughly entertaining manner. The Atrocity Archive, on the other hand, is the perfect blend of Dilbert, James Bond and the Cthulhu Mythos.
A first taste of Stross is like your first time with Tolkien or Gibson. Fantastic stuff!
Exactly. The first Stross novel I read, The Family Trade (AMAZON LINK) was a darned good story, which repackaged the tired old world-walking plot in a new and interesting way. Stross combined a homage to earlier takes on the basic formula (especially Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles) with new twists and directions. In doing so, he achieved something very rare: a well-written and thoughtful book that’s written with a page-turner, up-all-night liveliness.
Candidly, I was not as fond of the sequels to The Family Trade, but by then I had discovered Stross’ Laundry Files series, which very quickly became one of my very favorite long-running series.
Digression
I’ve been a science fiction/fantasy fan as long as I can remember. I still remember the thrill I had the first time I read The Lord of the Rings.
In the introduction to an American edition of LOTR, Tolkien said that one criticism with which he agreed was that “the book is too short.”
Exactly right.
Ever since, I’ve been a fan of multi-volume series in which the author is free to develop characters and plotlines over a long arc.
When I was younger, I used to worry that some of my favorite authors would pass on before they finished a beloved series. These days, with one grouchy Santa Fe-based exception, I am much more likely to worry that I will pass om before the series is finished. (Are there lending libraries in heaven?)
So I am grateful Stross decided to wind up the Laundry Files with The Regicide Report (AMAZON LINK).2
The Files
The Laundry Files consists of 14 novels and assorted novellas. So, before getting to the latest and final(?) entry, let’s look back at some of my favorite earlier novels.
The Atrocity Archive
Beale summarized The Atrocity Archive very well. It’s a melding of three genres—science fiction, horror, and spy thrillers—that is a homage to people like Len Deighton and Lovecraft, with a little touch of Dilbert at Work thrown in, but out of which emerged something new and original. Sheer, freaking genius. (AMAZON LINK)
The Jennifer Morgue
The Jennifer Morgue was a fun, fast read. Imagine a hybrid of Ian Fleming’s Thunderball and Lovecraft's Shadow Over Innsmouth whipped up by a computer geek who has spent a bit too much time playing RPGs at renaissance festivals. The plot's a bit silly, even given the context, and the geek technobabble's a bit too thick for my taste, but the novel pulls you along at an incredible rate even so. Plus, the concluding tongue-in-cheek quasi-academic essay on spy fiction was almost worth the price of admission on its own. (AMAZON LINK)
The Fuller Memorandum
In The Fuller Memorandum, our hero Bob Howard came to believe in God. Or, more, precisely, Gods. Specifically, the old gods. The hungry and bad-tempered gods who yearn to pull humanity into their slavering maws. As Bob says in the introduction, he’s come to believe in “God,” he’s waiting for God with a shotgun, and he’s saving the last shell for himself. (AMAZON LINK)
Ernest Lilley gave it a very positive review at The SF Site:,
Though the story is told in first person retrospective, under the guise of Bob having been directed to catch up on report filing from his missions, things get so dicey for him that it’s easy to forget that this is a dead giveaway that he’s bound to survive. Actually, there are points in the book where it’s not at all clear that he will, even if he does wind up writing that report. Stross is that clever.
Indeed, he is that clever.
The premise of the series is that what we consider magic is the result of forces conjured up by certain forms of computation, which makes magic a branch of what is normally highly theoretical mathematics, but which turns out to have practical, if not pleasant, applications. The Laundry gets most of its staff by co-opting them as an alternative to killing them off for accidentally discovering the power of mathematics to open doorways to other universes, ones where very hungry beasties wait wondering from where their next bite of soul (preferably human) food is going to come. Mo came in through that door in the first book, The Atrocity Archives, when a group of terrorists tried to use her to channel a demon to do their bidding. Bob saved her in true Bond fashion, even going so far as to disable a nuclear weapon in the bargain. In the second book, The Jennifer Morgue, things get really Bondian, when Bob and Mo find themselves fighting bad guys and a compulsion to act out the Bond plot formula. You think you know what’s bound to happen, and then you realize you don’t even know who’s who. Really, it’s brilliant.
Speaking of who’s who, Stross pays tribute to a different master spy author with each book. For his first, it was Len Deighton, the second, Ian Fleming, and now Anthony Price, whose historian turned agent is a good fit for Stross’ co-opted hacker character. The series also serves as a starting point for anyone who hasn’t read the authors whose idiom it employs, which is a fine thing as well.
Bob had come into the firm via a different door than academics like Mo. A hacker trying to do something clever, he came close to inadvertently leveling the city he lived in, which brought him to the firm’s attention. The result is that Bob’s neither an academic, nor was he born and bred a civil servant. He’s a bit of a loose cannon, like all our favorite secret agents, and is lucky, unlucky, and clever in equal measures. It’s a combination that ensures that he’ll live in interesting times, to our benefit if not his.
Highly recommended.
The Apocalypse Codex
Bob Howard’s role at the Laundry is evolving from field agent/ a computational demonologist towards management. While working with “External Assets,” Bob learns that the organization also quietly relies on freelance operatives to handle delicate missions that could otherwise cause serious embarrassment for Crown and country. (AMAZON LINK)
When Ray Schiller, an American televangelist with a disturbingly real gift for miracle healing becomes suspiciously close relationship with the UK’s Prime Minister, External Assets sends Persephone Hazard to infiltrate the Golden Promise Ministry and uncover his interest in British politics. In theory, Bob’s assignment is simple. He has to keep Persephone from triggering an international crisis. The trouble is that Bob finds her brilliant and striking, but worryingly wildly unpredictable.
It turns out, however, that—perhaps predictably at this point—that what is really looming is a supernatural—indeed, apocalyptic—crisis.
As I read it, I couldn’t help wondering whether Persephone would be the Laundry File’s first equivalent of the expendable Bond girl and, if so, what might that mean for Bob’s marriage? (But no spoilers.) And with a televangelist as the antagonist, I was also wondering just how many anti-religious tirades would Stross work into Bob’s narration compared with the average Laundry novel? (Ditto.) But, in the end, I enjoyed it a lot, which may say more about me than I’d like.
Another Digression: Possible Fan-fic
As I was reading The Apocalypse Codex, I also couldn’t help thinking about possible fan-fic Laundry Files mashups and crossovers. (Not that I would ever urge anyone to violate an author’s copyrights. This is just some First Amendment-protected theorizing.)
As I understood the early novels in the series, you had to have a computer to do magic. This is so because, as Bob Howard observed in a Laundry Files short story, “magic is a branch of applied mathematics.” You solve problems and theorems, invoke actions, and actions occur.
In subsequent volumes, however, we learned that ritual magic—i.e., working magic, raw, by force of will—works, albeit not reliably and at the risk of blowing the practitioner’s cerebral cortex. Practitioners can do the necessary computations in their heads, albeit risking death by Krantzberg syndrome or worse, because the human brain is a computational organ. As Dr. Renfield (nice foreshadowing there), explains: “We can carry out computational tasks, yes? We’re not very good at it, and at an individual neurological level there’s no mechanism that might invoke the core Turing theorems.”
But if there were such a mechanism? That’s where the crossovers come into play.
The Laundry Files x Dune
Sometime in the near future, the singularity occurs. Skynet goes active. The Machine War breaks out. Colossus and Guardian link nets. Humanity prevails, but the Butlerian Jihad knocks out all computational devices more sophisticated that a four function hand calculator.
The Jihad delays CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN long enough for the Mentat discipline to develop. But the apocalypse is still out there, so Leto II implements his Golden Path to produce a cadre of intuitive prescient Mentats capable of conducting computational demonology and the rest of the math/magic tools without risking death by Krantzberg Syndrome. Leto deems the personal and social costs of the Path essential because he knows that at the heart of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN are Marty and Daniel, who are Lovecraftian horrors beyond the ability of anyone other than the God Emperor to comprehend.
It always sounded better to me than the stuff Herbert and Anderson came up with.
How to work the Bene Gesserit, the Kwisatz Haderach, et al. into the story is an exercise I’ll leave for the reader.
The Laundry Files x Chuck
First, we have to eliminate the entire 5th season of Chuck, which would make me very happy. I hated the fifth season and especially the series ending as much as I loved the first four seasons.
In the crossover, Black Chamber tech agent Stephen Bartkowski and Laundry tech Hartley Winterbottom are developing the Intersect as a way for agents to conduct the necessary computations to work magic in their heads without risking death by Krantzberg Syndrome. Harvey goes undercover with the KGB to take advantage of the Thirteenth Directorate’s research. An accident with an early version of the Intesect turns Harvey into Alexei Volkoff. Once Alexei recovers his memory and goes back to being Hartley, he and Chuck develop the Intersect 3.0, which finally makes it possible to conduct computational demonology in one’s head. Through a mishap, Morgan is the first person to download the new Intersect, which leads to various humorous subplots.
Along the way, they discover that Decker is heading up the Black Chamber, which is seeking to prevent the final development of the Intersect because they worship the Elder Gods. Casey and Gertrude take out Decker, clearing the way for his team to go operational with the new Intersect.
Carmichael Industries, Volkhoff Industries, and the Laundry unite forces to face CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN.
The Regicide Report: The Final Episode (For Now)
In the later novels, there were two major developments. First, the existence of the Laundry and magic became public knowledge. Second, in order to stave off a world-ending apocalyptic disaster, members of the Laundry ally with an old enemy to stage a coup that installs an avatar of Nyarlathotep as Prime Minister. As usual when one chooses the lesser of two evils, things do not go well. Under the New Management, the British government becomes a theocracy ruled by a Lovecraftian Elder God. (AMAZON LINK)
In universe, the events of The Regicide Report is taking place circa 2015-16. Elizabeth II is still the Queen and, as the focus of belief by hundreds of millions of subjects has become a source of tremendous magical power that a sufficiently adept practitioner could use to great effect.
Multiple plots unfurl throughout the course of the book. A rump of Laundry senior management is scheming, although the target is only explicitly acknowledged in the latter third of the book. The Prime Minister’s chief priestess and her polygamous family are scheming. The Prime Minister is scheming.
Bob Howard is back—the book is supposedly Bob’s after-action report, which is not a spoiler as it comes up in the first chapter, but foreshadows the ending at least insofar as Bob’s survival is concerned—as is his wife Mo and a small host of characters from earlier novels. Bob and Mo seem to be mostly along for the ride, not aligned with any of the schemers, but simply trying to save the Queen and keep the world from ending.
The schemes all come together in what at first seems to be a climactic battle playing out in Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace. But then comes an even more climactic battle in another dimension.
The Regicide Report checks all the boxes we’ve come to expect. Complex spy thriller plot? Check. Lovecraftian horrors? Check. Humor? Check. Easter eggs aplenty? Check. Adroit references to real world books and films that only true science fiction and/or horror fans will spot? Check.
By the end Stross manages to tie up a lot of loose ends, although not all. I’m still left wondering what Blue Hades and the Deep Seven think about the New Management and Case Nightmare Red, to cite but one example.
I’ve got two main complaints. First, Stross seems to have let the Laundry universe’s rules of magic slide. Yes, there are still computers doing magical computations, but the human practitioners seem to be able to perform magic without crunching numbers. Of course, this is an inherent problem with magic in fiction. Other than Brandon Sanderson, few writers are able to develop magic systems that are coherent and consistent over a long series. It’s why Tolkien and Martin keep magic mostly off-stage. A related problem is that Bob has become an extremely powerful practitioner, but he seems oddly overmatched at points.
Second, the ending is pretty anticlimactic. This is probably inevitable. We know from virtually the first page that Bob survives to write an after-action report. In addition, the pre-Regicide Report Laundry Files series includes a quartet of novels in the New Management subseries.3 We know going in that those novels took place in universe after the events of The Regicide Report, so Stross was locked into a specific outcome. Still.
Obviously, this is not the place to start if you haven’t been following the Laundry Files. But it is a mostly satisfying conclusion to a series that has given me a lot of pleasure over the years. If you haven’t explored the Laundry Files, I highly recommend going back and starting with The Atrocity Archives and following the series through to this fun conclusion.
Personally, I would give that title to John Scalzi, but Stross is at the top of my list too.
While avoiding spoilers, it’s clear that Stross left himself room to bring the series back in the future. He claims it won’t involve Bob and Mo if it happens, but Arthur Conan Doyle had no intention of bringing Holmes back from the Reichenbach Falls.
I recommend skipping the New Management quartet. They’re pretty bleak, probably reflecting Stross’ increasingly bleak world view. You can tell from his blog that the state of the world is not to his liking (to put it very mildly) and it likely bled over into those books.