The most notable thing about this novel is its world building. Unfortunately, he quickly discovers that the life of a Laundry field agent is not all fun and games, and he gets caught up in trying to stop a scheme that has its roots in the Second World War, and the shadowy activities of Nazi Germany’s Ahnenerbe. His work for the Laundry is primarily to do with technical support, and he wants to become a field agent because he thinks it will be less boring than his desk job. The only problem is this: Bob is not a field agent. And Bob gets to do this job because he works for a branch of the British government called the Laundry, which prevents aforementioned unnameable horrors from crossing over and making everyone’s day even worse than it already is.
This might seem like a small thing, but the paper contains some very, very dangerous information: the beginnings of a mathematical theorem that, if pursued to its end and applied correctly, can create a rip between universes and bring unnameable horrors into our universe. He has a job to do, after all: steal and delete a file on one of the computers in the office building. This isn’t a place he wants to be (not that any sane person wants to be crouching behind a bush in the rain, as he points out), but he has to be here. The Atrocity Archives begins with the protagonist, Bob Howard, crouched behind a bush, in the rain, waiting for an office building to close down. And just like Mike Mignola, Charles Stross plays with those same connections for his novel The Atrocity Archives, the first book in his Laundry Files series. Much of this, however, is entangled with rumours that the Ahnenerbe was involved in occult research, which of course makes it perfect fodder for conspiracy theorists and fiction writers alike.
Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos with the more sensational stories of the Ahnenerbe, a branch of the Nazi government dedicated to historical and archaeological research, though they were also involved with the horrific medical research conducted at the concentration camps. The first story arc for the Hellboy series, the four-issue Seed of Destruction, pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the series, as well as lays down the beginning of plots and concepts that become important further down the line, mostly in the series B.P.R.D. As far as comics and graphic novels go, it’s the only one I try to keep up with, mostly because it’s relatively easy to keep up with: unlike the franchises of Marvel and DC, Hellboy has spawned only a handful of related comic books and story arcs, and it’s easier to determine which ones are considered part of the “main” plot, and which may be safely ignored or picked up a later date. I’ve had an enormous soft spot for Mike Mignola’s Hellboy series ever since Hope introduced it to me some years ago.
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