The Laundry Series: Difference between revisions

{{tropework}}

A series of [[Cosmic Horror Story]] novels and novellas by author [[Charles Stross]]. According to [[Word of God]], the series originated with his realization that Lovecraftian horror and the [[Cold War]] ''are actually pretty darn similar'', and if there really ''were'' Cthuloid horror lurking around the edges of reality, the government ''would'' get involved, and the departments they'd set up to do so would look very much like [[Trenchcoat Brigade|Stale Beer flavour]] [[Spy Fiction]].

* "The Concrete Jungle" (published together with ''Archive'' as ''Archives'', and [https://web.archive.org/web/20090529061309/http://www.goldengryphon.com/Stross-Concrete.html available online])

A [[Tabletop RPG]] adaptation has been published, using the [[Universal System|Basic Roleplaying]] game system -- the very same system used by ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]''.

** It has a sticker on the back that reads "[[Shout -Out|THIS MACHINE KILLS]] DEMONS".

* [[Apocalypse How]]:

** The Infovore is a high Class X-5, failing to enter Class Z primarily due to the difficulties inherent in consuming itself.

* [[Blood Bath]]: ''The Jennifer Morgue'' references the original legend with [[Elizabeth Bathory|Bathory]] PaleGrace (TM), a makeup that carries a youth-projecting glamour in every jar. As the company's founder says, [[Post -Modern Magik|stem cell research means they're down to about 14 parts per million virgin blood]] in every jar... but [[Human Sacrifice|there's no other way to get the endorphins that come with stress]].

** [[It Got Worse|Worse yet]], in about a decade there is supposed to be a period when just about ''anything'' [[Cosmic Horror Story|can walk right in]] [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|to our universe]] as long as people believe in it. Like, say, ''high-school witchcraft clubs''. {{spoiler|Worse worse yet, the latest novel suggests that this period has already begun.}}

* [[Colonel Badass]]: Captain Alan Barnes of the Artists' Rifles.

** While not exactly a car, the [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/SdKfz_2:SdKfz 2|Kettenkrad]] is cool enough to be salvaged from a bleak, airless alternate dimension where Axis has won WWII (And promptly caused an apocalypse), and lovingly restored by Pinky and Brains to working condition.

* [[Critical Failure]]: During ''The Fuller Memorandom'' when {{spoiler|Iris tries to summon the story's monster of the week into Bob while he casts a summon of his own -- from inside his freaking head, even! -- Bob leaves his body and is PULLED RIGHT BACK IN thanks to her summon. [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain]].}}

* [[Diesel PunkDieselpunk]]: The [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/:Memex |memex]], a WWII-technology hypertext database that uses kilometers of microfilm, millions of wristwatch-precision cams and gears and a very <s>nasty</s> effective magical defense system.

** [[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 [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking: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.

* [[Eagle Land]]: Um...is there a type three? Because while the Laundry and their European counterparts [[Shoot the Dog|aren't exactly]] [[Good Is Not Nice|that good]], they're about as nice as an organization can be in a world where [[HPH.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraft Was Right]]. The Laundry's american counterpart, the [[Names to Run Away From Very Fast|Black Chamber]], on the otherhand, is basically outright ''evil'', as are most other Americans in the story. Basically the Supreme Court in the land of the free has taken [[What Measure Is a Non -Human?]] to its most extreme conclusion, by declaring that the Constitution only applies to humans, and ''only'' pure humans at that. The Black Chamber loves taking the "human" out of "human intelligence", using lots of golems, zombies, Deep Ones, and the like, all of whom are said to have had no choice in becoming disposable tools for the organization. And the handlers of the various creatures are just brutal.

* [[The End of the World Asas We Know It]]: CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. In essence, {{spoiler|billions upon billions of humans doing what we do- thinking, imagining, calculating- is ''very bad'' for reality. Sufficient levels of belief in an entity, or calculations related to an entity, can summon it from one of the countless parallel (and... not so parallel...) universes where an iteration of it exists. In the best of times, the ability to do so is ''generally'' offset by the difficulty. However, a roughly 70-year period is coming very soon -- and probably has already begun -- during which... well, during which the stars are right. CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is predicted to be bad enough that an all-out nuclear war was considered, in order to reduce the population and thus the chances of summoning something big and hungry. However, the sheer number of deaths would almost certainly attract equally unpleasant creatures- and that's assuming that nobody dedicates the deaths to their favorite gibbering horror.}}

* [[Fish People]]: {{smallcaps|Blue Hades}} are an extremely advanced species, living on and below the deep sea floor, that have been around for millions of years. The various occult spy agencies stay in semiregular contact with them via [[Half -Human Hybrid]] go-betweens. To their credit, they aren't hostile towards humanity, which is just as well considering that they could wipe out much of us surface-dwellers via volcanoes and tsunamis. Angleton speculates that they have even more advanced weapons that humans cannot comprehend, comparing it to a soldier pointing a bayonet-tipped assault rifle towards a headhunter (who would only see a [[Blade Onon a Stick]].)

* [[Genre Blindness]]: In ''The Jennifer Morgue''. For a pop-culture quoting geek who claims to have seen all the films and books in question before he was 15, Bob takes an awfully long time to realize that the archetype he's labouring under is {{spoiler|1=James Bond. He even gets a cabin where the DVDs are all Bond titles, and still doesn't figure it out. To his credit, he easily figures he's in some kind of thriller, but even after Ellington tells him that the archetype in question has been reinforced by millions of viewers over fifty years of film -- [[No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine|while they're at dinner]]-- he still doesn't catch on}}. (Partially this is because the archetype itself is keeping him from realising, since {{spoiler|he's more the (good) Bond girl rather than Bond himself}}; also, Ramona Random mentions that it's designed to prevent "recursive attacks", i.e. trying to brute-force your way through the geas by taking advantage of the knowledge of James Bond.)

* [[Glowing Eyelights of Un DeathUndeath]]: If someone's eye sockets are full of glowing worms, that's a good sign to start running.

* [[Gone Horribly Right]]: a mild version of it. {{spoiler|Angleton, a.k.a. Teapot,}} was originally trained to be a weapon, an Eater of Souls under the command of the Laundry's predecessor. Unfortunately for J.F.C. Fuller and the rest, when it was trained/indoctrinated to pass for human, it absorbed the British ideals--fair play and honor and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|a very sharp sense of humor]]--more than its cynical human masters did, rendering it useless in its original purpose of a hungry ghost. {{spoiler|Instead the SOE assigned it to management, where it performs stellar service as Angleton.}}

* [[Half -Human Hybrid]]: {{spoiler|Ramona Random}} is half [[Fish People|Deep One]].

* [[Humans Are Special]]: Unfortunately, only in terms of danger the humanity unwittingly poses to itself, the Earth and the Universe. Other races don't seem to have quite the same potential for summoning malevolent soul-sucking [[Physical God|Physical Gods]] by accident or stupidity, as evidenced by the world not being reduced to a toy of said gods yet.

* [[Incompetence, Inc.]]: The Laundry finds it easiest to deal with people who can't be let go by simply giving them a pointless paper-pushing job until they can retire with a pension. It's cheaper in some ways, and it avoids a ''lot'' of nasty legal and PR issues.

* [[Instrument of Murder]]: ''The Jennifer Morgue'' plays on this; Bob's girlfriend, Mo, carries a Zann-model violin that she wields like a weapon. In an amusing [[Shout -Out]] to Woody Guthrie, the violin has "THIS MACHINE KILLS DEMONS" written on it.

* [[It Came From the Fridge]]: [[Noodle Incident|the reason temporal multiplexers are no longer allowed in the Howard residence.]] Cricket bats are involved.

* [[Killed to Uphold Thethe Masquerade]]: Deconstructed; the predecessors to the Laundry did this to Alan Turing. Since he was, you know, Alan Turing, this merely meant that they lost a potentially really useful resource when they could have achieved the same basic effect ''and'' made use of his skills and intelligence by simply drafting him into the service and making him sign the Official Secrets Act. After kicking themselves thoroughly, the Laundry went on to make averting this a matter of policy.

* [[Lighter and Softer]]: Compared to Stross's two earlier [[Cosmic Horror]] [[Cold War]] short stories "A Colder War" and "Missile Gap", in which {{spoiler|humanity is brought to extinction by an all-out war and in one case, the remnants escape only to die of cold and starvation in an alternate dimension}}, the Laundryverse is downright optimistic about humanity's chances.

* [[Magic From Technology]]: oh ''yes''.

* [[The Men in Black]]: Most major powers in the setting maintain their own occult intelligence services. So far, we've seen the Laundry for the British, the Black Chamber for America, the Faust Force for Germany, and the Thirteenth Directorate for Russia.

{{quote| I start swearing: not my [[Cluster F -Bomb|usual "shit-fuck-piss-cunt-bugger" litany]], but ''[[Up to Eleven|really]]'' [[Noodle Incident|rude words.]]}}

* [[No Such Thing Asas HR]]: Averted. [[Pointy -Haired Boss|They're not]] [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|particularly helpful]], though.

** This trope is [[Playing Withwith a Trope|played with]]. HR is often the ''cause'' of the problems that in [[Real Life]] they'd be expected to solve. This is partly just because of [[Rule of Funny]], partly because of the spy setting, partly because no one chose to be there and so they may take it out on each other, also partly because of the [[Ultimate Job Security]] - they can't lose their job until they screw up big enough to get killed.

* [[Our Mermaids Are Different]]: The [[Half -Human Hybrid|half-Deep ones]] are aquatic lifeforms but not half-fish, avoiding the [[Mermaid Problem]]. It's explicitly mentioned that some Laundry employees "start spending too much time skinny-dipping with a snorkel".

* [[Our Zombies Are Different|Our Residual Human Resources Are Different]]: They're demons bound into reanimated corpses. The garden-variety are not very clever, and are apparently programmable if you know the [[Black Speech|right language]]. However, there are many types of demons, and accidentally summoning the ''wrong'' kind gives rise to a possessed corpse that can steal souls ''by touch''. Oh, and make all the [[Boom! Headshot!]]s you want. It won't help.

* [[Plot Tailored to Thethe Party]]: ''The Jennifer Morgue'', in keeping with the James Bond theme, features the typical bunch of random gadgets. {{spoiler|[[Double Subversion|Doubly subverted]] - near the end of the story, Bob [[Inspiration Nod|muses]] that he ended up using all the gadgets except for an unmodified Zippo lighter that "he's going to keep". It then ends up playing an essential role in the epilogue.}}

* [[Pointy -Haired Boss]]: The woman from the Laundry's cover-organisation who doesn't have a clue what Bob actually ''does'' but, thanks to matrix-management, somehow has a say in how he does it.

* [[Powered Byby a Forsaken Child]]: Pale Grace Skin Hydromax cream. Made from "100% natural ingredients". There are also various other rituals and artifacts requiring human sacrifices.

* [[Punk in Thethe Trunk]]: Bob gets stuffed in the trunk of a car by cultists in ''The Fuller Memorandum''.

* [[Ret -Gone]]: The 'Forecasting Operations Department'. The precogs who would be in the Department predicted that the formation of the Department would inevitably lead to disaster, resulting in them deciding never to form the Department in the first place.

{{quote| "Bob loses saving throw versus ''shiny'' at -5 penalty, takes 3d8 damage to the credit card." }}

* [[Sarcastic Confession]]: the Blofeldian supervillain of ''The Jennifer Morgue'' jokingly claims that his plans for world domination are all for [[Right -Hand -Cat|Fluffy]]'s sake. {{spoiler|"Fluffy" is the vessel for the mind of the ancient [[Eldritch Abomination]] that he plans on resurrecting.}}

* [[Self -Fulfilling Prophecy]]: Averted. When Dr. Kringle prophesies that there will be no Christmas party next year, everyone assumes that it's because the Laundry will be overrun by gibbering squamous horrors by then. When Bob asks if they couldn't avert that by just canceling the party themselves, Andy derides the idea as ridiculous.

* [[Shout -Out]]: ''Lots'', ranging from [[HPH.P. Lovecraft]] to ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]''. ''The Jennifer Morgue'' is a [[Whole -Plot Reference]] to [[James Bond]].

** Bob Howard, named after [[Robert E Howard|Robert E. Howard]], collaborator and friend of [[HP Lovecraft|H.P. Lovecraft]] and [[Clark Ashton Smith]].

*** He already had one on his palmtop in ''The Atrocity Archives'', and there's another joke there about being locked in the library by an orangutan if Mo stayed too late.

* [[Sunglasses Atat Night]]: The mooks in ''The Jennifer Morgue''. Bob wonders why, and it turns out {{spoiler|it's because they're wearing eyeliner, which their boss can use to monitor their eyes and ears. Since they have stock options, they don't mind, but the shades are because it's hard to take a guard wearing eyeliner seriously.}}

* [[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.]]}}

* [[This Page Will Self -Destruct]]: happens to Bob's Powerpoint briefing in ''The Jennifer Morgue'' when he takes too long and doesn't get to finish it. Angleton is less than pleased, and resorts to sending him future briefings in his dreams.

* [[Took a Level Inin Badass]]: {{spoiler|Dominique, as a result of the Hero-trap geas.}} Bob himself steadily levels through the series, and is acknowledged as a good operative even in the first book. By book three, Mo herself has apparently kept the several levels of badass that she's taken, primarily due to her skills with the [[Artifact of Doom|Erich Zahn-model violin]], that the OCCULUS special forces team willingly accepts her presence on missions.

* [[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 Onon 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.

* [[Ultimate Job Security]]: Everyone in the Laundry has it. They can get themselves killed through treason, failed coups or their own innocent stupidity, but no one is ever fired. This is because Laundry policy is to avert [[Killed to Uphold Thethe Masquerade]] and [[Revealing Coverup]]. To keep people quiet, in most cases they are given jobs in the Laundry (and [[Mind Control]] to make them incapable of discussing it with people without the proper clearance).

** Details of Bob's past, like what exactly disaster he almost caused unwittingly before The Laundry found him also may vary.

[[Category{{DEFAULTSORT:The Laundry Series]], The}}

[[Category:Trope{{PAGENAME}}]]