Charles Stross bibliography


This is a list of books by British hard science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, and space opera author Charles Stross.

Stand-alone novels

Stross has announced that he is unlikely to write a third book in this series.

''The Laundry Files''

A series of science fiction spy thrillers about Bob Howard, a one-time I.T. consultant, now field agent working for British government agency "the Laundry", which deals with occult threats. Influenced by Lovecraft's visions of the future, and set in a world where a computer and the right mathematical equations is just as useful a tool-set for calling up horrors from other dimensions as a spell-book and a pentagram on the floor.
Stross also authorised, but did not author, an official role-playing game, The Laundry and a number of supplements based on the "Bob Howard – Laundry" series. The system uses an adaptation of the Call of Cthulhu RPG rules.

''The Merchant Princes'' series

The Merchant Princes is a series in which some humans have an ability to travel between parallel Earths, which have differing levels of technology. This series is science fiction, even though it was originally marketed by the publisher as fantasy. It was originally intended to be a trilogy, but at the end the writing of the first novel, the publisher requested that it be split for shorter length, and this length carried over to the other novels.
The first three books were collectively nominated for and won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History in 2007.
The six books were later re-edited back into the originally intended form as three longer novels. The new books were released in the UK beginning in April 2013, and in DRM-free format in the United States in January 2014.
In January 2013 Tor announced a new Merchant Princes trilogy.
The first volume in the series, Empire Games, was issued in January 2017. The second, Dark State, was published in January 2018.

''Halting State'' series

Science-fiction/crime novels set 'fifteen minutes in the future' which concentrate on life in the early 21st century, which are centered in Edinburgh in an independent Scotland, and how innovations in policing, surveillance, economics, computer games, the internet, memes and other inventions may change our lives in the future. Both novels are told in second-person viewpoint. The series was originally planned to be a trilogy but Stross claimed his current plot idea were mooted by the Snowden revelations and he was no longer planning a third book.
Stross's space opera series, featuring the android society that develops after the extinction of humanity. Stross has referred to the setting for these stories as the "Freyaverse."
The Science Fiction Book Club has published omnibus editions in the US that combine two books, without new material.