The Jennifer Morgue | ||||||||
Charles Stross | ||||||||
Golden Gryphon, 315 pages | ||||||||
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A review by Stuart Carter
Until today, that is.
Today, Bob Howard has been dragged, kicking and screaming, away from his PC and out into the world of espionage and skulduggery;
out of his geek-chic t-shirt, black jeans and trainers, and forcibly inserted into -- whisper it -- a suit! He's even got a
government expense account, if he can face the paperwork that actually using it will inevitably entail. And all this is so
that Bob can find out why software billionaire Ellis Billington has taken his yacht to the Caribbean and is
currently trying to upset the delicate balance of global power by raising a crashed submarine craft from the depths of the
sea in order to sell its secrets to the highest bidder.
Of course, this being a Charles Stross book about the Laundry, the crashed submarine craft is not a human one and the
aforementioned delicate balance of global power is not the one you might think it is; oh, no, I'm afraid it's far more
serious than that. So serious, in fact, that Bob's partner, Mo, whom both we and he first met in the previous Laundry
novel The Atrocity Archives, has to get involved (not because Bob's US minder on the mission is a succubus-possessed
siren of the deep, no, no, no…)
There's no mistaking it, this is Stross's take on the James Bond mythos, a wryly updated undermining of everything Ian Fleming
held dear -- and it's great fun! -- a Fleming-Lovecraft mash-up, blending the two incompatible universes in one contradictory
whole! Super-spy versus supernatural horrors!
Stross brings Bob face to face with the harsh reality of the spy business, even whilst pitting him against a deranged billionaire
living on a yacht converted from an old battleship and launching a 21st century attempt at world domination. Interestingly,
it's the Lovecraftian elements that are taken most seriously in this treatment -- Bond himself is seen as ridiculous by most
characters (and for more information on this there's an excellent essay included, "The Golden Age of Spying"), whereas
the potential incursion of nameless interdimensional horrors is treated with the utmost gravitas. It's hard to imagine
Hollywood -- or rather, Pinewood -- ever doing the same. All the other Bond trademarks are here: the gadgets, the
car, the women, the villain; but by having Bob as the central character they're all given a slight twist. Instead of
a lock-pick in his shoe Bob has a Treo loaded with software; instead of a souped-up Aston Martin Bob has a souped-up Smart
Car; and without giving the game away too much, instead of becoming "a hero" Bob is locked inevitably into the role of "The
Hero" from the start. The archetype-as-trap idea helps suspend our disbelief at a computer nerd becoming a super-spy,
and Stross uses it cleverly to extract the maximum irony from the idea of Bob as Bond.
I've loved Stross's take on the Lovecraft mythology ever since I read his exceptional short story "A Colder War" (first
published in Spectrum SF #3, and online at
The Jennifer Morgue is a rip-roaringly entertaining homage; a highly intelligent high adventure bursting with
geek humour and a love for the spy genre.
Stuart lives and works in London. A well-meaning but lazy soul with an inherent mistrust of jazz and selfish
people, he enjoys eclectic "indie" music, a dissolute lifestyle and original written science fiction, quite
often simultaneously. His wife says he is rather argumentative; Stuart disagrees.
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