I’m a massive fan of Charles Stross after discovering his wonderful two ‘Laundry’ novels ‘The Atrocity Archive’ and ‘The Jennifer Morgue’ where
mathematicians and computer geeks are employed by the British Civil Service have
to play James Bond against Lovecraftian occult threats to the state.
Repeatedly Stross throws out ideas that can leave your head spinning, such as in ‘Accelerando’ with its depiction of technological singularities.
Here we have all sorts. There’s a Laundry short story, a post-human
version of Jeeves and Wooster set on Mars, American hackers fighting a ban on
the free use of the Internet and one of his best ever stories, ‘A Colder War’
where the American/Russian proxy war in Afghanistan is somewhat complicated by
the USSR’s use of shoggoths and the Iraqi’s determination to unleash Yog-Sothoth.
This book is a great place to start for one of the UK’s most talented and entertaining SF writers.