Interview with Charlie Stross

One of my favourite authors, Charlie Stross, has a new book out. Dead Lies Dreaming is set in the same alternate history fantasy setting as his other Laundry Files books, but with a new set of characters that aren't part of the Laundry.

If you're baffled by what I'm saying, then read this interview with Stross. 

Santa is being shackled to a cross outside Hamley’s Toy Shop on London’s Regent Street by four elven warriors who are intent on executing him in the first paragraph of Edinburgh author Charlie Stross’ new novel.

The gruesome scene opens his latest novel, Dead Lies Dreaming, in which the parallels between the dystopian world of the writer’s Laundry Files novels and the one we find ourselves living in today are disturbingly familiar. It’s a point not lost on the Broughton-based sci-fi author, but then the action and characters in his books are “extrapolated from our current lived reality”, he explains.

 Dead Lies Dreaming is set in a grimly dystopian future where magic is widely accessible and a government called the New Management bears as much ill-will as some of the nastier Tories, except they are competent, and yet, people are reading it as consolatory escapist fiction because our current reality is so horrible. That is the scariest part of it for me,” says Stross, adding, “Imagine what the consequences would be if magic was a thing that was accessible and all the horrible ways it could go wrong. For example, can you imagine if Boris Johnston had the magical power to compel people to believe everything he said at least for 15 minutes?”

Set in the world Stross established in his award-winning Laundry Files series, Dead Lies Dreaming, a political satire, is a great jumping on point for anyone unfamiliar with the previous books in the series and like those that have gone before, it’s written for an adult audience.

I have read almost everything Stross has published and certainly will be reading Dead Lies Dreaming at some point. If Lovecraftian fantasy isn't to your taste, I highly recommend his alternate-history Merchant Princes series, which has a solid grounding in history and economics.