The Traders’ War (comprising The Clan Corporate and The Merchants’ War)
The Revolution Trade (comprising The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens)
Empire Games
Dark State
THE LAUNDRY FILES
The Atrocity Archives
The Jennifer Morgue
The Fuller Memorandum
The Apocalypse Codex
The Rhesus Chart
The Annihilation Score
The Nightmare Stacks
The Delirium Brief
The Labyrinth Index
STORY COLLECTIONS
Toast
Wireless
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHARLES STROSS is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. He has won three Hugo Awards for Best Novella, most recently for the Laundry Files tale “Equoid.” His work has been translated into more than twelve languages. His most recent novel prior to this is The Labyrinth Index, also part of the Laundry Files, published in 2018.
Like many writers, Stross has had a variety of careers, occupations, and job-shaped catastrophes, from pharmacist (he quit after the second police stakeout) to first code monkey on the team of a successful dot-com startup (with brilliant timing, he tried to change employers just as the bubble burst). Along the way he collected degrees in pharmacy and computer science, making him the world’s first officially qualified cyberpunk writer.
You can visit his website at accelerando.org, or follow him on Twitter where he’s @cstross. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Crimes Against Marketing
The Interior Life
Bookish Lore
Foul Papers
Overdrawn at the Pennine Bank
Bidding War
Cannonball Run on the M25
Back to the Future
Whitechapel Nights
Charnel Library
Acquisitions and Takeovers
Also by Charles Stross
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DEAD LIES DREAMING
Copyright © 2020 by Charles Stross
All rights reserved.
Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Cover photographs: arch © Getty Images;
skulls and desktop © Shutterstock.com
A Tordotcom Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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New York, NY 10271
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-26702-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-26701-6 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250267016
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First Edition: 2020
1 The only direction in which to expand in Knightsbridge being straight down, this decade all the hip billionaires were excavating grotesque mega-basements beneath their mansions. And once having dug, it was cheaper to inter the digger in the basement than to remove it, like pharaonic pyramids where the skeletons of its builders were sealed into the foundations. Today, an estimated three thousand mini-diggers are entombed below London, leaving a plethora of sacrificial sites to confuse the hell out of future archaeologists.
1 For his personal collection. Bernard was, like most rare book dealers, a bibliophile and a hoarder.
2 Imp could only emulate the power of flight when he got stoned enough to jump up and down on the trampoline in the back garden, which never ended well.
1 It amused Rupert to give his Bonds the use of his Aston Martin when they were running errands on his behalf: it was better than leaving it to gather dust in a secure parking garage while he was out of the country.
1 Rupert told her afterwards that a copy of the recording would be delivered to the police if she ever turned on him, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t already have enough leverage on her. What pissed her off about the incident was the way her calves had ached for a week afterwards—all because Rupe had to combine pleasure with business.
1 At 117 miles or 188 kilometers, the M25, London’s orbital motorway, is accurately described as the world’s biggest car park—if car parks had ten lanes, variable speed limits, and speed enforcement cameras. The fastest unofficial lap time is believed to be just over forty minutes.
1 And it was a special genius indeed, albeit one with alarming implications she was blessedly ignorant of. Google or IBM would have paid billions for ideal solutions to the Travelling Salesman problem or the Blind Knapsack problem, if they had known about it. The Pentagon would have paid, too, even if they had to strap Del into a chair and staple her eyelids open to use her.
1 Lessons were Learned, the hard way, by everyone. In Imp’s case the lessons were: (a) don’t be a groper, and (b) burning hair smells terrible. Also (c) don’t whine to your big sister, lest she punish you harshly before forcing you to apologize to your victim.
