The third novel in Charles Stross’s Laundry series, The Fuller Memorandum, is out.
“Like the majority of ordinary British citizens, I used to be a good old-fashioned atheist, secure in my conviction that folks who believed—in angels and demons, supernatural manifestations and demiurges, snake-fondling and babbling in tongues and the world being only a few thousand years old—were all superstitious idiots. It was a conviction encouraged by every crazy news item from the Middle East, every ludicrous White House prayer breakfast on the TV. But then I was recruited by the Laundry, and learned better.
I wish I could go back to the comforting certainties of atheism; it’s so much less unpleasant than the One True Religion….
I’m a believer. And like I said, I wish I was still an atheist. Believing I was born into a harsh, uncaring cosmos—in which my existence was a random roll of the dice and I was destined to die and rot and then be gone forever—was infinitely more comforting than the truth.
Because the truth is that my God is coming back.
When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun. And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.”
Oh yeah, I’m definitely going to get into this one as soon as I finish Mattingly’s Armada. I’ll post a review when I finish it. In my opinion, Stross is BY FAR at his best when he delves deeply into the squamous, the rugose, and the darkly divine.