The Atrocity Archives

Projectitohさんところでご紹介があったチャールズ・ストロスのクトゥルースパイ物。来月には早川書房から邦訳『残虐行為記録保管所』が出るようだ。以下あまぞぬより。あとで読む。

Lovecraft's Cthulhu meets Len Deighton's spies in Stross's latest, as the Scottish author explains in his afterword to this offbeat book offering two related long novellas, "The Atrocity Archive" and "The Concrete Jungle" (the latter previously unpublished). With often hilarious results, the author mixes the occult and the mundane, the truly weird and the petty. In "Atrocity," Bob, a low-level computer fix-it guy for the Laundry, a supersecret British agency that defends the world from occult happenings, finds himself promoted to fieldwork after he bravely saves the day during a routine demonstration gone awry. With his Palm, aka his Hand of Glory (a severed hand that, when ignited, renders the holder invisible), and his smarts, he saves the world from a powerful external force seeking to enter our universe to suck it dry. In "Jungle," Bob teams up with a cop, Josephine, to save the Laundry from a powermonger who seeks to stage an internal coup by using zombies as her minions. Amid all the bizarre happenings are the everyday trappings of a British bureaucracy. Bob gets called on the carpet by his bosses because he requested backup during an emergency without first getting his supervisor's okay and filling out the requisite forms. Though the characters all tend to sound the same, and Stross resorts to lengthy summary explanations to dispel confusion, the world he creates is wonderful fun.

最近クトゥルーネタが元気だ。東氏らの布教活動が実を結んできているのだろうか。今日は出先の本屋で『クトゥルー神話の謎と真実』(学研)をぱらぱらと見てきた。丁寧なビジュアル紹介が多く、ゲームなどから入ってきた読者にはとっつきやすい聖典解説になっている。

この道に分け入ってはやン十年だが、当時からこんなにいっぱいクトゥルー本が出回っていたら楽しかったのに。大きな本屋に出かけては創元推理文庫と青土社と国書刊行会の棚の前をうろうろしていたころがなつかしい。

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ドラエモフが好きで昔からクトゥルー系巡回先としていたNottsuo氏のイラストが数多く使用されていた。邪神解説ページでは、このまえ練り消しでつくったハスターはタコ系っぽく描かれて、ヨグ様はやっぱり丸かった。