The Laundry Files is a series of novels by British writer Charles Stross. They mix the genres of Lovecraftian horror, spy thriller, science fiction, and workplace humour. Their main character for the first five novels is "Bob Howard" (a pseudonym taken for security purposes), a one-time I.T. consultant turned occult field agent. Howard is recruited to work for the Q-Division of SOE, otherwise known as "the Laundry", the British government agency which deals with occult threats. "Magic" is described as being a branch of applied computation (mathematics), therefore computers and equations are just as useful, and perhaps more potent, than classic spellbooks, pentagrams, and sigils for the purpose of influencing ancient powers and opening gates to other dimensions. These occult struggles happen largely out of view of the public, as the Laundry seeks to keep the methods for contacting such powers under wraps. There are also elements of dry humour and satirisation of bureaucracy. While the stories are partially inspired by the Cthulhu mythos universe created by H. P. Lovecraft and others, they are not set in Lovecraft's universe. In Stross's world, the greatest magicians are the scientists who closely study the phenomena; it features a secret history of historical thinkers who also dabbled in or stumbled upon occult uses of their work. The Concrete Jungle and Equoid both won the Hugo Award for Best Novella, and "Overtime" was a nominee for best novelette. The series as a whole was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2019. The Atrocity Archives The Atrocity Archives is the first collection of Laundry stories by British author Charles Stross. It is set in 2002–3 and was published in 2004. It includes the short novel The Atrocity Archive (originally serialised in Spectrum SF in Spectrum SF, #7 November 2001) and The Concrete Jungle, which won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novella. The protagonist of both stories is computer expert Bob Howard, who re-discovers certain mathematical equations that contact other worlds. The Laundry detects the disturbance and swoops in to give him a mandatory job offer ("I thought I was just generating weird new fractals; they knew I was dangerously close to landscaping Wolverhampton with alien nightmares"). From his position in the Laundry, a secret British occult intelligence organisation, Howard is allowed to learn something of the secret history of the world, as well as the various modern counter-measures the Laundry has