Quotes from work
The Laundry Files

The Laundry Files is a series of novels by 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 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", the British government agency which deals with occult threats. "Magic" is described as being a branch of applied computation , 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 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.


Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“Had enough of my poetry yet? That’s why they pay me to fight demons instead.”

Overtime (2009)
The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014)

Charles Stross photo

“I am sick and tired of reality refusing to conform to the requirements of my meticulously-researched near-future or proximate-present fictions.”

The Curse of Laundry http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/10/the-curse-of-laundry.html, October 19, 2014
The Laundry Files

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“Like the famous mad philosopher said, when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error.”

Which just goes to show Nietzsche wasn't a C++ programmer.
Overtime (2009)
The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015)

Charles Stross photo

“There is no point in prioritizing doing your job when your organization faces being defunded in less than three months’ time if you don’t do something else: you do what’s necessary in order to ensure your organization survives, then you get back to work.”

This is how the iron law of bureaucracy installs itself at the heart of an institution. Most of the activities of any bureaucracy are devoted not to the organization’s ostensible goals, but to ensuring that the organization survives: because if they aren’t, the bureaucracy has a life expectancy measured in days before some idiot decision maker decides that if it’s no use to them they can make political hay by destroying it. It’s no consolation that some time later someone will realize that an organization was needed to carry out the original organization’s task, so a replacement is created: you still lost your job and the task went undone. The only sure way forward is to build an agency that looks to its own survival before it looks to its mission statement. Just another example of evolution in action.
Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 16, “Democracy in Action” (pp. 311-312)

Charles Stross photo

“I’m disappointed in you, Mo: How could you imagine that the militarization of the police might be seen as a huge potential growth market by defense contractors?”

“How indeed.”
Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 14, “Infected” (p. 284)

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“And she actually looks—well, I’m not sure how to describe her. Scary is such an inadequate word, don’t you think?”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 11, “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” (p. 197)

Charles Stross photo

“If life hands your research department lemons and a recipe, you shouldn’t be surprised if they make lemonade for you. Or, better still, anti-lemonade countermeasures.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 10, “Great Pay and Benefits! Apply Here!” (p. 184)

Charles Stross photo

“Unfortunately his IQ seems to be off the scale, in the wrong direction.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 10, “Great Pay and Benefits! Apply Here!” (p. 182)

Charles Stross photo

“If pauses can be pregnant, this one’s on the run from a fertility clinic.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 5, “The Office” (p. 89)

Charles Stross photo

“Despair, dismay, disorientation, and delusion: the four horsemen of the bureaucratic apocalypse are coming my way.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 5, “The Office” (p. 77)

Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo
Charles Stross photo

“Having a policy based on works of fiction is worse than having no policy at all.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014), Chapter 12, “Green Lime” (p. 229)

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