100-538: The Laundry Files is a series of novels by British writer Charles Stross . They mix the genres of Lovecraftian horror , spy thriller , science fiction , and workplace humour . Their main character for the first five novels is "Bob Howard" (a pseudonym taken for security purposes), a one-time I.T. consultant turned occult field agent. Howard is recruited to work for the Q-Division of SOE , otherwise known as "the Laundry",
200-507: A Kirkus Reviews starred review and was also reviewed in Asimov's Science Fiction . The Annihilation Score is the sixth novel in the Laundry series. It is set in summer/autumn 2013 and was published in 2015. The protagonist is Dr. Dominique "Mo" O'Brien, the wife of Bob Howard, the protagonist of previous books in the series and also an agent for the intelligence agency known as the Laundry. As
300-472: A disdain for the ringing of church bells. Similarities are also both seen in their role in the construction of stoneworks. Akin to the Old Norse tale of the jötunn who built the wall of Ásgarðr , giants often enter into wagers involved in the building of churches which they later lose, as with the tale of Jätten Finn who is attributed with the construction of Lund Cathedral . Ruins are also attributed to
400-698: A group of wolves is referred to as "Gríðr's grey herd of horses". Wolf-riding gýgjar are referred to as myrkriður ("riders in the night") or kveldriður ("dusk riders"). Hræsvelgr is told in Vafþrúðnismál (37) and Gylfaginning (18) to be a jötunn in an arnarhamr (eagle-guise) who creates the wind by beating his wings. Other jötnar , such as Þjazi and Suttungr are able to become eagles by wearing their arnarhamir , or resemble them like Griðr in Illuga saga Gríðarfóstra who has hands like eagle talons. In later material composed during
500-525: A homage of sorts to Anthony Price 's Dr David Audley/Colonel Jack Butler series of spy thrillers, and features two minor characters named Roskill and Panin, names which appeared as recurring characters in Price's series. The title is derived from General J. F. C. Fuller , military theorist, right-wing intellectual occultist, and an associate of Aleister Crowley , and also a reference to the film The Quiller Memorandum (Stross has noted that his original intention
600-437: A much wider semantic scope in Old Norse literature than solely jötnar , also including individuals with unusual or supernatural traits such as witches, abnormally strong, large or ugly people, ghosts and berserkers . Terms for jötnar are often translated into Modern English as "giant" or "giantess". John Lindow uses the glosses to contrast them with the gods but notes that they are not giant, being similar in size to
700-573: A naturalistic standpoint. Despite this, a system of motifs repeat when travelling to the jötnar . In the Prose Edda that the jötnar dwell in Jötunheimr which is at points located in the North or East and in Þrymskviða can only be reached by air, however jötnar are also found South and across water . Jötnar such as Suttungr and Skaði live in mountains, which is further reflected in
800-663: A police plot to control the minds of the British public in the interests of law and order, which it becomes clear will backfire, releasing the King in Yellow; she overcomes it with the help of her staff, destroying Lecter in the process. The Nightmare Stacks is the seventh novel in the Laundry Files series. It is set in March–April 2014 and was published in 2016. The protagonist is Alex Schwartz,
900-666: A reminder of his existence to the populace. Mhari and the survivors of her team then return to the UK, leaving the President behind as he struggles, and eventually fails, to reassert his authority. But the struggle occupies US forces and so buys time for the United Kingdom, which was of course the Prime Minister's plan in the first place. Mhari keeps her job and is congratulated, and the novel ends with her contemplating her future with her fiancé in
1000-497: A second edition of the game to be released in early 2025. Stross published a short non-canonical work set in the Laundry Files universe on a fanfiction website, "The Howard/O'Brien Relate Counseling Session Transcripts – Part 1". Audiobook versions of the novels in the Laundry Files series have been narrated by Gideon Emery, Elle Newlands, Jack Hawkins , Caroline Guthrie, and Bianca Amato. Charles Stross Charles David George " Charlie " Stross (born 18 October 1964 )
1100-677: A terrifying version of the Princess Kitty cartoon character. Season of Skulls is the third book in the "Tales of the New Management" trilogy, continuing the story that began in Dead Lies Dreaming and Quantum of Nightmares . It is set in March 2017 (and the summer of 1816) and was released in May 2023. It combines elements of Regency fiction with The Prisoner . Stross' short stories "Down on
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#17330848792401200-564: A type of being. Old Norse risi and Old High German riso derive from the Proto-Germanic masculine noun * wrisjon . Orel observes that the Old Saxon adjective wrisi-līk 'enormous' is likely also connected. Old Norse þurs , Old English þyrs , and Old High German duris 'devil, evil spirit' derive from the Proto-Germanic masculine noun * þur(i)saz , itself derived from Proto-Germanic * þurēnan , which
1300-640: A vampire (or PHANG in Laundry terminology) working for the Laundry, who was introduced in The Rhesus Chart . On a parallel-universe Earth , a species called Elves or alfar have evolved to be expert magic users. They have visited Earth in the past, from which comes a great deal of folklore. Civil war has left the Elves' home world uninhabitable and they plan to magically invade the Earth and make it their new home. To scout ahead, they send Agent First of Spies and Liars,
1400-586: A writer full-time, as a technical writer at first, but then became successful as a fiction writer. In the 1970s and 1980s, Stross published some role-playing game articles about Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in White Dwarf magazine. Some of his creatures, such as the death knight , githyanki (the name borrowed from George R. R. Martin 's 1977 novel, Dying of the Light ), githzerai , and slaad (a chaotic race of frog-like humanoids) were later published in
1500-460: Is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy . Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera . Between 1994 and 2004, he was also an active writer for the magazine Computer Shopper and was responsible for its monthly Linux column. He stopped writing for the magazine to devote more time to novels. However, he continues to publish freelance articles on the Internet. Stross
1600-518: Is a novella in the Laundry Files series. It is set in March/April 2014 and was released in March 2022. The story takes place at the same time as The Nightmare Stacks and just before The Delirium Brief . The protagonist is Bob Howard, an intelligence agent for the Laundry. It is intended to explain why he wasn't in the UK during the events of The Nightmare Stacks . Following the death of his boss Angleton in The Rhesus Chart , Laundry agent Bob Howard
1700-577: Is clearly based on the story of Peter Pan , and suggests that the author is back in a pastiche role again. The "Tales of the New Management" series jumps forward in time to depict the events under Prime Minister Fabian Everyman (an alias of the Elder God Nyarlathotep). Instead of The Laundry, the series explores the civilian side of this new United Kingdom, controlled by magic and superpowers. “Dead Lies Dreaming” features corrupt plutocrat Rupert Bigge and his executive assistant Evelyn Starkey. Rupert
1800-546: Is covertly the high priest of another Elder God and is hunting for a magical book that gives its owner occult power. Evelyn is ordered to get it for him by any means necessary. To this end, she recruits her younger brother Imp and his street gang made up of Game Boy, Doc Depression and the Deliverator, which in turn attracts the attention of Wendy Deere, a corporate thieftaker. After adventures through Everyman's London and (via an extradimensional passage) past and mythical versions of
1900-616: Is etymologically connected to Sanskrit turá - 'strong, powerful, rich'. Several terms are used specifically to refer to female entities that fall into this wider category, including íviðja (plural íviðjur ), gýgr (plural gýgjar ) and tröllkona (plural tröllkonur ). Terms for jötnar are also found in Old Norse compound words such as bergrisi , ("mountain-risi") and hrímþurs ("rime-þurs", or "frost-þurs"). The cognates jötunn and eoten , and þurs and þyrs have been equated by scholars such as J. R. R. Tolkien and Rudolf Simek , with
2000-600: Is given work as a field agent in finding and protecting Irish Professor of Logic Dominique "Mo" O'Brien, as her work – dangerously close to the point of bending reality – has triggered the Laundry's person-of-interest checks. There, Howard must contend with the Black Chamber , which in this setting was never actually disbanded, but merely went underground as the US government's equivalent of the Laundry. Howard and Mo eventually head to Amsterdam and deal with Middle Eastern terrorists also on
2100-515: Is inhabited by jötnar and beings associated with them. A common motif is the journeying to obtain secret knowledge from the jötnar . In the Eddic poem Hyndluljóð , Freyja travels to the gýgr Hyndla to obtain understanding of the lineage of Ottar , and the "ale of remembrance" ( Old Norse : minnisǫl ) so that he does not forget it. In the Eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál , Óðinn travels to
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#17330848792402200-539: Is noted for having the likeness of a þurs . As the influence of Christianity grew, jötnar became demonised and typically portrayed as less intelligent, easier to outwit and more monstrous, as is common with giants in later Germanic folklore . In some later sagas, such as Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss , risar are clearly distinct from jötnar however in others the terms are used interchangeably, albeit with an overall trend that jötnar have begun to be seen negatively relative to risar . Troll has
2300-452: Is perhaps a precursor to the Laundry stories; however, the fictional background and assumptions are different, and it is its own distinct setting (as the world is destroyed at the end of it, the Laundry series is clearly not a sequel). Cubicle 7 published The Laundry , a role-playing game based on the Laundry stories in July 2010. On June 21, 2024 a successful Kickstarter was completed on
2400-561: Is promoted to replace him and has to take over Angleton's ongoing projects. One of those projects is overseeing the wards that lock down magical sites outside the United Kingdom. Consequently, Bob has to travel to Tokyo on an overseas liaison mission with the Miyamoto Group in Japan, partnering with Dr. Yoko Suzuki. The Miyamoto Group is the Japanese equivalent of the Laundry and Dr. Suzuki is part of
2500-518: Is set in 2002–03 and was published in 2004. It includes the short novel The Atrocity Archive (originally serialised in Spectrum SF in Spectrum SF, #7 November 2001) and The Concrete Jungle , which won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novella . The protagonist of both stories is computer expert Bob Howard, who re-discovers certain mathematical equations that contact other worlds. The Laundry detects
2600-578: Is set in 2005 and was published in 2006. It contains the title novel The Jennifer Morgue , the short story "Pimpf", and an essay titled "The Golden Age of Spying". The collection is a sequel to the stories published in The Atrocity Archives . Billington, the billionaire antagonist of the book, intends to repeat a 1975 CIA attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine in order to access the Jennifer Morgue, an occult device that allows communication with
2700-465: Is sometimes used to gloss the word " jötunn " and its apparent synonyms in some translations and academic texts, this is seen as problematic by some scholars as jötnar are not necessarily notably large. The terms for the beings also have cognates in later folklore such as the English yotun , Danish jætte and Finnish jätti which can share some common features such as being turned to stone in
2800-400: Is the third novel in the Laundry series of novels. It is set in 2008 and was published in 2010. As in the previous novels, the protagonist is Bob Howard, an agent for the intelligence agency known as the Laundry. Where The Atrocity Archives was written in the idiom of Len Deighton and The Jennifer Morgue was a pastiche of Ian Fleming 's James Bond novels, The Fuller Memorandum is
2900-594: The jötunn Vafþrúðnir whereupon they engage in a wisdom contest. He also travels to the jötnar to obtain from Suttungr the Mead of poetry , which imparts skill in poetry to any who drink it. The völva who tells the Völuspá prophecy to Óðinn, while not explicitly described as a jötunn but was raised by them. Cosmology in Germanic mythology, as with other oral cultures, has many apparent contradictions when viewed from
3000-573: The Fiend Folio monster compendium. His first published short story, The Boys , appeared in Interzone in 1987. A collection of his short stories, Toast: And Other Rusted Futures , was released in 2002; subsequent short stories have been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award , and other awards. His first novel, Singularity Sky , was published by Ace Books in 2003 and was also nominated for
3100-576: The Faroese and Shetlandic popular customs of dressing up as giantesses referred to as Grýla (plural grýlur ), or other similar terms, in costumes traditionally made from a combination of animal skins, tattered clothes, seaweed, straw and sometimes featuring masks. Grýla is a female creature described in Sturlunga saga as having fifteen tails, and listed as a tröllkona in the Nafnaþulur section of
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3200-617: The Hugo Award . His novella The Concrete Jungle (published in The Atrocity Archives ) won the Hugo award for its category in 2005. His novel Accelerando won the 2006 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel , and was on the final ballot for the Hugo Award in the best novel category. Glasshouse won
3300-487: The Laundry series. It is set in 2010 and was published in 2012. In this novel, the protagonist Bob Howard, an agent for the intelligence agency known as the Laundry, is tasked with investigating American televangelist Raymond Schiller, who seeks to gain influence in Britain. Bob finds out that Schiller, who preaches a quiverfull prosperity gospel , is serving a supremely dangerous supernatural entity and trying to bring about
3400-410: The jötunn Eggþér who has been interpreted as either a guardian of the gýgjar who live there or a herdsman of the wolves. Wolves are also taken as mounts by gýgjar such as Hyndla and Hyrrokkin , the latter of which using snakes as reins. This is further attested in skaldic poetry in which "wolf" is described by the kennings " Leikn's horse", " Gjálp's horse", " Gríðr's horse", while
3500-590: The 2007 Prometheus Award and was on the final ballot for the Hugo Award in the best novel category; the German translation Glashaus won the 2009 Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis . His novella Missile Gap won the 2007 Locus Award for best novella, and he was awarded the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award or Skylark at Boskone 2008. His novel The Atrocity Archives (2004) detailed a British intelligence agency tasked with investigating otherworldly horrors; using ideas similar to those in
3600-608: The 2007 Locus Award for best novella. The Concrete Jungle (contained in The Atrocity Archives ) won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 2005; Palimpsest , included in Wireless , won the same award in 2010, and Equoid in 2014. Glasshouse won the 2009 Prometheus Award for Best Novel; Stross was a Best Novel finalist in 2009 for Saturn's Children and has been nominated four other times for Iron Sunrise (in 2005), Accelerando (2006), The Revolution Business (2010) and Annihilation Score (2016). The Apocalypse Codex won
3700-492: The 2013 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel . Stross's work has also been nominated for a number of other awards, including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award , Arthur C. Clarke Award , and the Hugo Award for Best Novel , as well as the Japanese Seiun Award . Stross believes himself to be autistic , but does not intend to seek a professional diagnosis. Frost giant A jötunn (also jotun ; in
3800-406: The British government agency which deals with occult threats. " Magic " is described as being a branch of applied computation (mathematics), therefore computers and equations are just as useful, and perhaps more potent, than classic spellbooks, pentagrams, and sigils for the purpose of influencing ancient powers and opening gates to other dimensions. These occult struggles happen largely out of view of
3900-527: The Christian period such as the legendary sagas, jötnar are often portrayed as uncivilised and cannibalistic. In the case of Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss and Hálfdanar saga Brönufóstra they specifically eat both human and horse meat , the latter of which was directly associated with heathen practices. The post-Christian association between jötnar and pre-Christian practices is also seen in Beowulf , in which
4000-450: The Eater of Souls into Howard's body in order to advance their goals. This fails because the Eater of Souls was already bound into Angleton's body decades ago by the predecessors of the Laundry; it has "gone native", aligning itself with the Laundry's goals and British values. Howard uses magic to raise the dead, using them to overcome the cultists. The Apocalypse Codex is the fourth novel in
4100-534: The Elves to be refugees who cannot go home for fear of their lives, and requests asylum under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 . The Delirium Brief is the eighth book in the Laundry Files series. It is set in May–June 2014 and was released in July 2017. The Delirium Brief is set about a month after The Nightmare Stacks . Unlike Books 6 and 7, the narrative viewpoint shifts back to Bob Howard. After
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4200-494: The English ettin or yotun , thurse and hobthrust , Danish jætte , Swedish jätte and Finnish jätti . In Germanic folklore , giants often share traits with jötnar , particularly as depicted in legendary sagas, combined with motifs from other European giants and are often interchangeable with trolls . As with jötnar , Germanic giants live outside of human communities, in woods and mountains. They commonly show an aversion to Christianity, often showing
4300-542: The Farm", "Overtime", and "Equoid" are within the same Laundry continuity. "Down on the Farm" and "Equoid" both take place between the second and third novels (2007 in the setting); "Overtime" takes place between the third and fourth novels (2009 in setting). "Equoid" won the 2014 Hugo Award for best novella, and "Overtime" was a shortlist nominee for the 2010 Hugo Award for best novelette. Stross's 2000 short story " A Colder War " also mixes elements of Lovecraft and espionage, and
4400-523: The Groups's Department of Apocryphal Organisms. The nominal purpose of Bob's mission is to police minor versions of Yōkai : a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japan now growing more active as CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN progresses. But it becomes apparent that the real reason he's been brought to Japan is to confront an existential threat in the form of a hellmouth located beneath the Puroland theme park and
4500-422: The Laundry has adopted to deal with these threats. Despite the nature of the work, the Laundry is an efficient and low-key modern organization; more cubicle-jockeying than stately mansion towers and hidden volcano lairs, in other words. A tag-line used for the books by publisher Ace Books was "Saving the world is Bob Howard's job. There are a surprising number of meetings involved". In The Atrocity Archive , Howard
4600-414: The Laundry personnel assigned to her team are Ramona (from The Jennifer Morgue ) and Mhari ( The Rhesus Chart ), women who have history with her estranged husband Bob Howard. She is also the holder of the powerful magical Erich Zahn bone violin that she calls Lecter. Lecter is increasingly asserting its power, including induced dreams that relate to The King in Yellow . She is unwillingly compelled to act in
4700-455: The Laundry's UK plan in the previous book, is to install a Lovecraftian entity ( Cthulhu in this case) as the head of the US Executive and thus survive and fight the crisis caused by CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, which is well underway at this point. Mhari and her team try to evade the deputy director (nicknamed DeeDee) and her agents, and despite fatalities manage to free the President to broadcast
4800-777: The Loch of Scockness to drink. Orcadian folklore also explains the Ring of Brodgar as dancing giants who were turned to stone by the morning sun. This motif is also seen in Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar , in which the gýgr Hrímgerðr engages in a senna with Helgi Hundingsbane until the sun rises and she is turned to stone. The Orcadian tradition of Gyro Night derives its name from Old Norse : gýgr and consisted of two older boys dressing up as masked old women one night in February and chasing smaller boys with ropes. Similar to this are
4900-535: The Nazis. The Wannsee Conference was thus an attempt to harness the occult via mass human sacrifice in the Holocaust, but it ultimately failed after Allied interference. Mo is captured by the terrorists and sent via wormhole to an alternate universe where the Nazis did succeed – although not in a manner they would have preferred. In this alternate universe, the Nazis summoned a frost giant out of Germanic/Norse legend, which
5000-541: The RPG book Delta Green (1996), Stross wrote in the afterword to the book: "All I can say in my defence is ... I hadn't heard of Delta Green when I wrote The Atrocity Archive ... I'll leave it at that except to say that Delta Green has come dangerously close to making me pick up the dice again." Rogue Farm , his 2003 short story, was adapted into an eponymous animated film that debuted in August 2004. Stross
5100-454: The appearance of jötnar are uncommon; however, the progenitor of the jötnar is described as having the form of a man. Some female jötnar are described as being beautiful, such as Gerðr and Hymir 's partner, while others are described as monstrous and having many heads. Some dwarfs are described as jötnar such as Regin and Fáfnir , while in Alvíssmál , the eponymous dwarf
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#17330848792405200-410: The assistance of Detective Inspector Josephine Sullivan of Milton Keynes, investigates the incident, which soon expands to the murder of humans as well as cows. They attempt to track who could possibly have had access to the gorgon-emulation software and installed it. Meanwhile, a ransom note is received demanding the software be uninstalled. Their investigation eventually leads them to the developers of
5300-682: The book with the real-world developments. The Labyrinth Index is the ninth book in the Laundry Files series. It is set in Winter 2014/early 2015 and was released in October 2018. Mhari Murphy is the protagonist. She has been elevated to the House of Lords (taking the title " Baroness Karnstein ") and serves under the new Prime Minister following the Laundry-engineered overthrow of the Government described in
5400-569: The city, Evelyn acquires the book, Rupert is presumed lost, and the gang awaits their next adventure. Quantum of Nightmares is the second book in the "Tales of the New Management" trilogy, continuing the story of the main characters from Dead Lies Dreaming . It is set in December 2016 and was released in January 2022. The plot references elements of Mary Poppins and Sweeney Todd . Escape from Yokai Land (originally titled Escape from Puroland )
5500-565: The claimed ancestors of the Ynglings . Odin also seduces the jötnar Gunnlöð and Rindr and marries Jörð . In the cases when gods marry jötnar , they appear to be fully incorporated into the gods and are referred to as Ásynjur in Nafnaþulur . Consistent with this, reference to Skaði's vés in Lokasenna and toponyms such as Skedevi in Sweden suggests that despite being a jötunn , she
5600-474: The day and living on the periphery of society. Old Norse : jötunn and Old English eoten developed from the Proto-Germanic masculine noun * etunaz . Philologist Vladimir Orel says that semantic connections between * etunaz with Proto-Germanic * etanan ('to eat') makes a relation between the two words likely. The words are cognate with ettin , an archaic word for
5700-576: The dead, in spite of the hazard of awakening the Great Old Ones. Bob Howard thwarts this attempt with the added help of "Mo" O'Brien and an American counter-occult agent. Where 2004's The Atrocity Archives is written in the idiom of Len Deighton , The Jennifer Morgue is a pastiche of Ian Fleming 's James Bond novels and refers to the real-life Project Azorian (incorrectly named by the press as Project Jennifer); Stross also uses footnotes and narrative causality , two literary devices common in
5800-533: The descendants of jötnar . A common motif that often forms the core storyline of Eddic narratives is the unsuccessful attempts of jötnar to marry one of the goddesses, be it through either trickery or force. In contrast, the female jötunn Skaði chooses the male Vanr Njörðr as a husband. According to the Ynglinga saga , she later had children with Odin, from whom kings such as Earl Hakon were descended. The Vanr Freyr also marries Gerðr , who are
5900-479: The device from exploding before escaping back to his original universe. In The Concrete Jungle , Bob Howard is called in for an emergency: there are too many Concrete Cows in Milton Keynes . Howard reads classified files on the presumed cause: gorgonism , which has been banned by treaty for military use, and has been researched by various scientists over time – Lavoisier , Geiger , and Rutherford . Alarmingly,
6000-412: The disturbance and swoops in to give him a mandatory job offer ("I thought I was just generating weird new fractals ; they knew I was dangerously close to landscaping Wolverhampton with alien nightmares"). From his position in the Laundry, a secret British occult intelligence organisation, Howard is allowed to learn something of the secret history of the world, as well as the various modern counter-measures
6100-475: The eldest living daughter of the Elven King, who takes over the human identity of a student named Cassie. The Elves invade Leeds and threaten the British heartland with their powerful magic, but they are defenseless against non-magical human weapons and are defeated in a fashion which leaves Cassie inheriting the absolute rulership of the elves present. Cassie immediately surrenders to the British military, declares
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#17330848792406200-573: The end of the world. The book introduces new allies for Bob: Persephone Hazard, a freelancing witch and secret agent, and Peter Wilson, a vicar and expert in biblical apocrypha . According to Stross, while the first three books in the series were written in the style of Len Deighton , Ian Fleming and Anthony Price , respectively, the fourth installment is written in the style of a Peter O'Donnell ( Modesty Blaise ) novel. For future installments, Stross feels that "the series has acquired an identity and feel of its own", and does not intend to continue
6300-420: The end of the world. The rump of the Laundry executes a coup in cooperation with the surviving cultists from The Fuller Memorandum , bringing Britain under the rule of Nyarlathotep as a lesser evil. The Delirium Brief is published by Tor . According to Stross, the book was somewhat delayed due to the Brexit referendum , as the pro-Brexit result required a large rewrite to reconcile the politics portrayed in
6400-476: The fight with mother of the eoten Grendel which has been noted by scholars to closely resemble the fight between a trollkona and Grettir in his eponymous saga , wherein the female beings may only be reached by crossing through water. The seemingly ununified location of the jötnar has been suggested to be an outcome of their intrinsically chaotic nature. Even within the same story, what seem like contradictions have been noted by scholars, prompting
6500-458: The first gods , resulting in a flood of Ymir's blood, in which all jötnar drowned except Bergelmir and his family, who survive this event by way of sailing upon a luðr . This has been linked to a runic inscription on a sword hilt in Beowulf which describes the eotenas being killed in an ancient flood and has been proposed to derive from Germanic and wider Indo-European mythology . According to Gylfaginning , after Ymir
6600-400: The gods and humans in lands such as Jötunheimr . The jötnar are frequently attested throughout the Old Norse record, with eotenas also featuring in the Old English epic poem Beowulf . The usage of the terms is dynamic, with an overall trend that the beings become portrayed as less impressive and more negative as Christianity becomes more influential. Although the term " giant "
6700-475: The gods, and are best conceived of as a kin or family group, separated by relation rather than physical appearance. Due to this issue, some scholars such as Terry Gunnell, Jeramy Dodds and Benjamin Thorpe either anglicise or leave untranslated terms for jötnar in translations and academic work. In a stanza of Völuspá hin skamma (found in the poem " Hyndluljóð "), all jötnar descend from Ymir . Gylfaginning elaborates on this, describing that
6800-497: The gorgon-software into the Laundry's own internal cameras while Angleton was distracted. Howard and Sullivan infiltrate the Laundry to pull its Internet connection, while Angleton attends the meeting where he might be deposed. Howard comes upstairs to find Angleton victorious; it seems that his rival did not understand who Angleton truly reported to in the matrix management of the Laundry before launching her attempt to have him dismissed. His position as head of Counter-Possession Unit
6900-419: The government has built a network to artificially emulate gorgons in FPGAs , then planned a network of cameras that could be hooked into this emulation – the CCTV network of anti-crime cameras deployed across Britain in the late 90s and early 2000s. This network was intended as a defense if the Old Ones were to rise and attack; however, someone has subverted a CCTV camera to stone a cow, then deposited it with
7000-449: The hunt for Mo's work. They also research the Atrocity Archive, a classified record of German efforts in World War II. In this universe, the Thule Society , a pagan and occult group formed during the defeat of Germany in World War I, actually achieved results; they were absorbed by the Ahnenerbe , which became the occult branch of the SS, and who used German mathematician David Hilbert 's research (unwillingly) to attempt to gain an edge for
7100-411: The idea that vampires could exist or be involved, which complicates the investigation. It transpires that elder vampires have been subtly mind controlling Laundry staff to convince them that vampires do not exist. A group of recently created vampires join the Laundry, and the two elder vampires in the book are destroyed, at the cost of the life of James Angleton, Howard's boss. The Rhesus Chart received
7200-519: The invasion of the Elves in which thousands of people perished, the existence of the Laundry has become public knowledge, and the agency faces a new threat, this time not supernatural but political; the Prime Minister uses the Laundry as a scapegoat and dissolves it, to be replaced with a public–private partnership . The mastermind behind this plan turns out to be an old antagonist from The Apocalypse Codex , Raymond Schiller, still trying to bring about
7300-505: The man-eating eoten Grendel is described as having a "heathen soul" and "heathenish hand-spurs". Female jötnar are explicitly described as being heathen in some later sources such as Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar , in which religion prevents her from being with the hero, and the legendary saga Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns , in which she must be baptised before marrying the hero. Giants with names cognate to terms for jötnar are found in later Northern European folklore , such as
7400-438: The new nightmarish world unfolding before them. Dead Lies Dreaming was marketed as the tenth book in the Laundry Files series but does not concern itself with the titular agency or its members apart from an occasional cameo. More accurately, it is the start of a separate trilogy set in the same world the author refers to as "Tales of the New Management". It is set in December 2016 and was released in October 2020. This novel
7500-751: The normalised scholarly spelling of Old Norse , jǫtunn / ˈ j ɔː t ʊ n / ; or, in Old English , eoten , plural eotenas ) is a type of being in Germanic mythology . In Norse mythology , they are often contrasted with gods (the Æsir and Vanir ) and other non-human figures, such as dwarfs and elves , although the groupings are not always mutually exclusive. The entities included in jötunn are referred to by several other terms, including risi , þurs (or thurs ) and troll if male and gýgr or tröllkona if female. The jötnar typically dwell across boundaries from
7600-479: The novel was to be published in late 2001, Al-Qaeda was no longer obscure, so he chose a different group to use in the novella. In the afterword to the Science Fiction Book Club 2-in-1 edition of The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue , Stross notes that friends warned him against reading the novel Declare while he was working on The Atrocity Archives due to the strong parallels between
7700-514: The novels of Terry Pratchett . Stross plays with expectations by having Ramona, one of H. P. Lovecraft 's "Deep Ones", known as "Blue Hades" in Laundry speak, serve as the "bad" Bond girl, but Billington's identification of Bob with 007 proves to be wrong. Bob plays the "good" Bond girl's role until Mo intervenes as the real 007 character. The Jennifer Morgue was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 2007. The Fuller Memorandum
7800-546: The other concrete cows. As unauthorised use of the CCTV-basilisk network could hold the entire nation at hostage, this is an incredible risk. In an unrelated event, Howard is informed that he is being negligent about preparing for a meeting about a Business Software Alliance audit for the Laundry's software; Howard strongly opposes the audit, as the BSA invariably installs "spyware" to snoop for unauthorised installations. Howard, with
7900-532: The outer gods and the bureaucracy of the United Kingdom. In September 2012, Stross released The Rapture of the Nerds , a novel written in collaboration with Cory Doctorow . The two have also together been involved in the Creative Commons licensing and copyright movement. In December 2017 he gave a talk at 34C3 . Accelerando won the 2006 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel . Missile Gap won
8000-404: The pastiche motif. The Rhesus Chart is the fifth novel in the Laundry series. It is set in spring 2013 and was published in 2014. The novels follow the protagonist Bob Howard, an agent for the intelligence agency known as the Laundry. The Rhesus Chart plot describes an investigation into what appears to be vampire activity, despite the fact that people are almost suspiciously resistant to
8100-465: The phenomena; it features a secret history of historical thinkers who also dabbled in or stumbled upon occult uses of their work. The Concrete Jungle and Equoid both won the Hugo Award for Best Novella , and "Overtime" was a nominee for best novelette . The series as a whole was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2019 and 2024. The Atrocity Archives is the first collection of Laundry stories by British author Charles Stross . It
8200-526: The previous book. The new Prime Minister Fabian Everyman (an alias of Nyarlathotep ) sends Mhari to the United States on a mission to discover what has happened to the now-missing President and who is running America in his stead. There she finds that the Black Chamber has made the citizenry forget the very existence of the President and have taken over the US Government. The Black Chamber's plan, echoing
8300-462: The primordial jötunn Ymir formed in the warm waters that arose in Ginnungagap when the rime of Niflheim was melted by the heat of Muspelheim . He lay there asleep, fed by milk from Auðumbla , whereupon from his left armpit he sweated a male and a female, and his legs begat a son with one another. Together, these children became the ancestors of all other jötnar . Later, he was killed by
8400-497: The proposal of a model that the otherworld where the jötnar dwell can be reached from a number of passages or boundaries that cannot be traversed under normal conditions, such as the mountains, darkness and "flickering flame" crossed by Skírnir in Skírnismál . In Eddic sources, jötnar present a constant threat to gods and humans, often leading them to confrontation with Thor . Hárbarðsljóð and Þrymskviða tell that if it
8500-509: The public, as the Laundry seeks to keep the methods for contacting such powers under wraps. There are also elements of dry humour and satirisation of bureaucracy. While the stories are partially inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos universe created by H. P. Lovecraft and others, they are not set in Lovecraft's universe. In Stross's world, the greatest magicians are the scientists who closely study
8600-452: The software, who are mostly dead from their own cameras, and an agent named " McLuhan " ("the medium is the message"). Howard discovers that the whole incident was inter-department wrangling gone wrong; a rival manager had been seeking to show that Angleton (Howard's manager) was incompetent and letting his own secret programs leak, and her minions had covered their tracks more bloodily than necessary. The "BSA audit" had been an excuse to install
8700-454: The spy and horror genres". Stross states that his inspiration for the spy in these novels is closer to the out-of-place bureaucrats of Len Deighton than to the James Bond model. He also mentions that when he began writing the series in 1999, he chose as villains "an obscure but fanatical and unpleasant gang who might, conceivably, be planning an atrocity on American soil"; but that by the time
8800-408: The terms Old Norse : bergrisar (mountain risar) and Old Norse : bergbúi (mountain dweller), a kenning for jötunn . Their lands of inhabitation are not restricted to this, also including forests, underground, and the shore. Sometimes they are referred to as living in specific geographical locations such as Ægir on Læsø . These motifs are also seen in the section of Beowulf concerning
8900-578: The two works. Stross also mentioned the similarities between the novel and the Delta Green role-playing game, similarities referenced in the short story "Pimpf" included with The Jennifer Morgue ; Delta Green is also about elite government conspiracies working against villains who attempt to wield power derived from the Mythos, as well as rival conspiracies. The Jennifer Morgue is the second collection of Laundry stories by British author Charles Stross. It
9000-528: The words being used to describe the being in either Old Norse or Old English respectively. In the Eddas , jötnar are beings typically with similar power to the gods and may also be referred to by the negative terms troll and þurs . The harmful nature of þursar is also described in the Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems , where they are identified for causing strife to women. Descriptions of
9100-607: The works of both beings, as in the Old English poem The Ruin and the aetiological story of Wade's Causeway in Yorkshire . Some standing stones in northern Europe are explained as petrified giants such as the Yetnasteen in Orkney which derives its name from Old Norse : Jǫtna-steinn ( Jötunn's stone). According to folklore, it awakens every New Year at midnight whereupon it visits
9200-410: The world lurches toward the potentially apocalyptic forces that will probably bring about CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (the Laundry's codeword for an inevitable worldwide awakening of Lovecraftian horrors, "the stars coming right"), regular humans have started developing superpowers . Mo is promoted to management, tasked to create an inter-agency department to coordinate between The Laundry and the police; two of
9300-425: Was actually an elder being that fed on heat and who proceeded to destroy Earth. Bob and a team of SAS agents open their own gate, infiltrate the frozen universe, rescue Mo, and leave a nuclear bomb to 'sanitise' the scene. Bob belatedly realises that the nuclear bomb is a counterproductive trap; the frost giant intends to use its power to propel it into their reality, which has far more heat to eat. Bob manages to stop
9400-421: Was actually secondary to his position as Private Secretary, and that position's manager went all the way to the top. Publishers Weekly was somewhat mixed in their review saying that "though the characters all tend to sound the same, and Stross resorts to lengthy summary explanations to dispel confusion, the world he creates is wonderful fun". The Washington Post called it "a bizarre yet effective yoking of
9500-506: Was born in Leeds , England. He showed an early interest in writing and wrote his first science fiction story at age 12. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy in 1986 and qualified as a pharmacist in 1987. In 1989, he enrolled at University of Bradford for a post-graduate degree in computer science. In 1990, he went to work as a technical author and programmer. In 2000, he began working as
9600-500: Was killed, his body was wrought into the world and a sea surrounded it. The gods then gave the surviving families jötnar lands along the shore to settle, placing them in the periphery. Ymir's brows were then used to build Midgard and protect it from the jötnar due to their known aggression. Most stories in Old Norse mythology show a clear division between "This World", pertaining to that of gods and men, and "The Other", which
9700-510: Was not for Thor and Mjöllnir , jötnar would soon overrun Midgard and Asgard respectively. Nonetheless, Thor also has a positive relationship with some gýgjar , such as Gríðr and the unnamed wife of Hymir , who provide magical items and council that enable him to overcome other jötnar . The distinction between gods and jötnar is not clearly defined and they should be seen as different culturally rather than biologically, with some gods, such as Odin , Thor and Loki being
9800-882: Was one of the Guests of Honour at Orbital 2008, the British National Science Fiction convention ( Eastercon ), in March 2008. He was the Author Guest of Honour at the Maryland Regional Science Fiction Convention ( Balticon ) in May 2009. He was Author Guest of Honour at Fantasticon ( Denmark ) in August 2009. He was the Guest of Honor at Boskone 48 in Feb 2011. Cubicle 7 used their Basic Role-Playing license to create The Laundry (2010), based on Stross' writings, wherein agents must contend with both
9900-466: Was to pastiche Adam Hall's Quiller novels, but that he changed the plan part way through the writing). The plot of the book revolves around an eponymous document which describes a supernatural entity, the Eater of Souls. The document and Howard's boss James Angleton go missing, and Howard must locate them. Angleton turns out to be involved in a struggle with cultist double agents inside the Laundry loyal to Nyarlathotep , who capture Howard and plan to bind
10000-455: Was worshipped in Old Norse religion . One of the tröllkonur who dwell in the wood Járnviðr is a mother of jötnar in the forms of wolves and from whom are descended all wolves. This tröllkona has been suggested to be Angrboða , the gýgr who begat with Loki the monstrous wolf Fenrir and venomous worm Jörmungandr who become enemies of the gods. Also in Járnviðr dwells
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