Good morning world. Am now trying to work out how to deal with the existence of COVID-19 in the Laundry Files, because this is *total* turd-in-the-punchbowl time for alternate-present fictional world-building. Especially when one is writing political satire via Lovecraftiana.

Metaphor time: maybe the New Management has waved its terrible magic wand and abolished all pandemics, except there’s a minor magical cost associated with it (a teind). But …

… The real question is, what is the shape of the society that’s going to emerge from this disaster?

All my assumptions that made the Laundry Files work as satire from 2012 onwards have just had the rug pulled from under them.

Also: although I’m currently on a three-book side-quest into the world of the New Management, I hadn’t forgotten the main story arc about the Laundry. But COVID-19 has trashed my solution to CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. Not sure it works any more. (No, I’m not telling you what it was.)

My real problem is, we’re about to hit the buffers at the end of our current economic track—the one we’ve been careening down, no brakes, since 1945. Now facing maybe 40% unemployment by mid-2021. Coming next: kleptocratic oligarchs, war/fascism, or revolution/New Deal. Which?

… Upshot:

I think I’m going to have to pivot the series theme again (as I did while writing “The Delirium Brief”). However, the direction I need to go in won’t be clear for at least another six months.