“The Atrocity Archives” contains two stories by Charles Stross. The novel “The Atrocity Archive” has been published for the first time in the magazine “Spectrum SF” between November 2001 and November 2002. The novella “The Concrete Jungle” was published for the first time in 2004. In 2005 it received the Hugo Award as the Best Novella of the year.

“The Atrocity Archive” introduces Bob Howard in his first active-duty assignments on behalf of the Laundry, a secret British government agency with a unique specialization, the occult. The first task is tedious and at the end Howard is soaking wet but the next assignment, which is supposed to be routine, becomes a deadly battle fought in two universes with a creature conjured by the Nazis decades earlier.

In “The Concrete Jungle” the power of the Gorgons was implemented in surveillance cameras. Bob Howard begins to investigate a concrete cow and eventually discovers that behind it there’s a conspiracy that will endanger the Laundry itself.