I really want to support Mr. Stross in order to encourage him to continue writing stories based in this world. I think there might be something wrong with the link to the kindle version of this story. it says the release date is October 16th. (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EWZCTD0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270488014)
Is it possible that I can read the whole story for free on tor.com right now yet I have to wait multiple weeks to get the same story on my ereader of choice? This has to be a mistake, right?
If you look at Charlie’s Blog Entry for the story, you’ll see that it’s up on tor.com today, and available for pre-order. This is not a mistake. Presumably Tor, as the publisher, has chosen to do this as a marketing maneuver to drive traffic to the tor.com website, and made it worth Charlie’s while to do so.
Given that it’s free on tor.com, I’m not inclined to complain overmuch.
I think this is obligatory.
Seriously, I preordered it for kindle, and am kind of bummed that the free version comes out before the version that I quite willingly paid for.
I 
Bob Howard.
Tor.com, Instapaper. Getting the story onto your kindle for portable reading until your pre-ordered version shows up is left as an exercise for the reader.
Just finished reading it. Is it just me, or is the Laundry universe getting darker as time goes on? I know he said he plans on showing us CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, but things are moving faster than I thought.
Ick.
You haven’t read the Apocalypse Codex have you?
For those that haven’t read it, all I can say is “IT WAKES. IT HUNGERS.”
and. “Beware of silver tongued priests.”
Hey, you can cancel your order if you like. The ebook is only there as a convenient way for you to carry it around and/or give me (and my editors) a kickback.
Yes, things are gradually getting darker as we move into CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN territory, but some of the forthcoming books have lighter elements. Book 6, in particular, is going to be a bit lighter (for the most part) … but first you’ll need to get through Book 5, “The Rhesus Chart”, which comes out next July, and which is spattered with more blood than a very bloody thing indeed.
Charles Stross meets Equis? So I guessing this isn’t going to be a children’s story then…
Hmm. Some things are worth buying… I’ll just wait for it to pop up on my kindle.
Nice nod to cold comfort farm. I wonder if the pub was “The hanged man”? Too bad there was no version of robert poste’s child, or the wrong that was done to papa. (or WAS there?)
That is exactly the case. It isn’t for sale for three weeks but is free on the website. Tor does this all the time.
The modern equivalent of First Serialized in Analog perhaps.
Just a note for those who read this before reading the story: The “troublesome content” warning is justified. Given the influences Mr. Stross sort-of-cited in the story I can see why it went that direction, but there is material here that would definitely not be Approved by the Comics Code. (In fact, I seem to remember reading a pre-code horror comic which had some related elements.) Hard to be more specific without getting into spoiler territory (wouldn’t spoil the story, actually, but would ruin one bit of suspense)… but if some varieties of hentai are triggerish for you, then you might want to skip this story.
Two other stories in Stross’s Laundry universe are also available on tor.com, neither of which will hit those triggers.
Good analogy. The tor.com website is operating as somewhere between online magazine and “loss leader” promotion of Tor’s authors.
Could hardly do anything but… Since you’re here, I’m going to play fanboi for a moment and just say that I like what you’ve done with the Laundry series. I’m not a fan of splatter-shock terror, or of most horror generally … but Lovecraft at his best was able to horrify at an intellectual level by making the ordinary world suddenly appear suspect. You’ve captured some of that, added the action/adventure aspect, and kept enough humor (or is that humours?) to balance the darker elements. Very effective, at least for this reader.
As I said above, I don’t think anything in Equoids was unjustified in the context… but it is somewhat rough trade. Well written, but I wouldn’t want it to be someone’s introduction to the Laundry universe… and I think even you’d agree that what you’re looking for is readers who care about the war’s outcome enough to continue reading despite that rather than the kind of readers who would be attracted by it.
No-one would be attracted by it.
And its not a war. That implies decision. This is the inevitable consequence of a universal clockwork cycle winding down into a landscape of terminal autophagy,
You know. The usual Saturday.
My limited exposure to a particular subculture suggests that a few would. Whether that’s healthy is a different question.
From the human point of view, it’s repulsing an invasion, and is going to increasingly become a military action rather than just policing. That meets my definition of “war”. Admittedly from the Old Ones’ point of view it’s just a matter of knocking over a few anthills and rounding up the herd for slaughter, but by definition humanity disagrees.
