The Laundry Series: Difference between revisions

The series consists of both novels and short stories:

* ''The Atrocity Archive''

* ''The Jennifer Morgue''

* "Pimpf" (included in ''Morgue'')

* [[Demonic Possession]]: A common plot element. In particular, a botched summoning at the climax of ''The Fuller Memorandum'' causes {{spoiler|Bob to get possessed by ''himself''.}}

* [[Depleted Phlebotinum Shells]]: standard ammunition for the Laundry takes the form of "banishment rounds"--silver-plated bullets with spells engraved onto them in 90-nanometer scale. Takes care of certain nasties being [[Immune to Bullets]] very nicely, and it still works on other targets as well.

** [[Justified Trope]]: Angleton [[Dangerously Genre Savvy|isn't stupid]], and there's a perfectly good reason why he uses a machine so outdated that it shouldn't ''exist'': there's this procedure called [[wikipedia:Van Eck phreaking|Van Eck phreaking]] that you can use to eavesdrop in a CRT or LCD monitor and gain access to classified information. The memex uses microfiche readers, and is not vulnerable to this method. It also cleanly averts [[Everything Is Online]] and the myriad of Laundry network problems that Bob always complains about.

* [[Disaster Dominoes]]: Bob notes early in ''Memorandum'' that no disaster is a single event; instead, they're the result of a whole chain of small missteps that all add up in a spectacularly wrong fashion. This comes back as a [[Brick Joke]] {{spoiler|when Iris and the rest of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharoah try to sacrifice him to summon up the Eater of Souls. Unfortunately for them, they've made a chain of missteps and misunderstandings: nothing disastrous individually, but ''in toto...''}}

* [[Stealth Pun]]: Bob is eventually revealed to have the middle names Oliver Francis, at the same time as he is reluctantly given an apprentice; Peter-Fred Young. So that's [[Bastard Operator From Hell|BOFH]] and PFY...

* [[Succubus]]: The demon riding Ramona Random.

* [[Taken for Granite]]: The basilisk effect, which converts carbon to silicon via spooky observer-effect magic. Then blows it apart thanks to the wildly unstable atomic configurations that result. SCORPION STARE is the result of the Laundry producing a chip that can duplicate the effect with a camera, allowing its use as a weapon. Any camera with the chip can be activated through an Internet connection, and this includes just about [[Paranoia Fuel|every CCTV, webcam, and digital camera in Great Britain.]] And you know those DRM chips Hollywood wants installed in all new cameras? Guess what those are.

* [[Theory of Narrative Causality]]: Powers Billington's Hero-trap geas. He casts himself as the villain in a James Bond plot, limiting his opposition to one hero archetype, and at the critical moment plans to destroy the geas, leaving himself ascendant and unopposed. {{spoiler|Of course, that would only work if he captured the true Bond figure, instead of the designated [[Bond Girl|love interest]] -- at which time, [[Wrong Genre Savvy|the plot becomes one of the variations.]]}}

* [[Those Wacky Nazis|Those Really Messed Up Nazis]]: Creators of the titular Atrocity Archives.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Fred the Accountant.

* [[Trauma Conga Line]]: ''The Fuller Memorandum'' is a type E, made clear from the onset (in the prologue). (Warning: major plot spoilers ahead, obviously). In order, {{spoiler|Bob performs an exorcism that goes bad and ends up killing a civilian. The next day, Mo gets an even more traumatizing job and returns on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Then Bob gets attacked by a zombie, shot, attacked by Cthulhu cultists and narrowly escapes, his office is broken in, he gets an internal investigation set on him, gets suspended, attacked by the cultists again, kidnapped, gets part of his right arm carved up ''and eaten'' while he's fully conscious, and is very nearly possessed by the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Eater of Souls]]. The latter ritual involving, among other things, the cultists killing a baby and making Bob drink its blood.}} Mind that the whole ordeal happens within a two-week period. At the end of it, {{spoiler|Bob is a wreck both physically and psychically, as alluded to by both the prologue and epilogue. Though ''Overtime'' suggests that he does recover eventually.}}

* [[Tuckerization]]: Dr Mike Ford, the Laundry researcher with the implausible eyebrows who appears in ''The Fuller Memorandum'', is a tuckerization of author and fan personality [[John M. Ford]], to whom the novel is dedicated.

[[Category:Horror Literature]]

[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]