Tag: charles stross

In the Mail and Early, to Boot: The Nightmare Stacks.

A day early: all hail the power of hyper-efficient Amazon delivery systems! A… suggestion? If you have not effectively memorized* Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies at this point, perhaps you should go read that book first. You’re gonna need that mindset up and running, methinks.

Moe Lane

*You have, of course, at least read it, yes? – Because if you have not, well, this is what you need to do this week. The only reason why I’m not calling it Pratchett’s best book is because sussing out which is Terry Pratchett’s best book isn’t something that you do lightly.

In the Mail: ‘The Annihilation Score.’

Part of Charlie Stross’s Laundry series, which is one of the few series that I will religiously buy in hardcover and sight unseen.  This one is supposed to be about the Mythos, government bureaucracy, and superheroes: should be a hoot. Especially since this series is apparently leaving the realm of Secret History for good. Or bad. Or squamous…

Book of the Week: “The Annihilation Score.”

This one I am anticipating: The Annihilation Score (A Laundry Files Novel) will not be out for another week and a half, and I don’t think that I’m going luck out with this one and find a copy at a Borders bookstore that had unaccountably been put out early (which is what happened to me with another book in this series).  Mostly because Borders doesn’t exist anymore, of course.  Anyway, this is going to be the latest book in Charlie Stross’s Lovecraft-meets-spy-novels-meets-computer-math series, and it’s been a pretty nifty series so far. Hopefully, Charlie can keep a handle on his increasing tendency to conspiracy crank before the Great Old Ones come to finish the series by eating everybody’s souls – which is a selling point for this series, actually. It’s Lovecraftian cosmic horror. You know everybody’s gonna die. The author promised. Continue reading Book of the Week: “The Annihilation Score.”

Just got my copy of the Laundry RPG…

…it’s very nifty. For those wondering: The Laundry is a roleplaying game based on the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross, which is itself a horror/espionage series about computational power meets the Great Old Ones. Nice layout, decent writing, and the game is more or less mechanics-compatible with both Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green.

Good times, good times.

Odd thing about the Fuller Memorandum.

It would seem that The Fuller Memorandum – which is, of course, the latest volume in the Cthulhu-meets-mathematics-meets-spy-fiction series by Charles Stross – is not supposed to be out until July 6th.  But, of course, that doesn’t mean that the book magically pops into our reality on that date: it has to be printed ahead of time, which means that it has a tangible physical existence.

And that means that it has to be shipped to bookstores before the official publication date.

And sometimes they screw up, and put one copy in the relevant genre section.

And sometimes a person is walking through the relevant genre section in that magic golden hour between somebody screwing up, and somebody noticing the screw-up.  On the off chance that something like this could happen.

And sometimes that person notices the book, grabs it without breaking stride, and heads for the register.

And sometimes that person buys the book, and gets away clean.

Not that I’d know anything about that, of course.

Moe Lane

Book of the Week: The Trade of Queens.

Because I broke down and eventually read The Revolution Business; gratuitous bashing of the last administration aside (I had Charlie Stross figured as being too smart to auto-date his books like that), it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The Trade of Queens finishes it all up, which is probably all to the good.

And so, farewell to The Cat in the Hat.