by Charles Stross.
I highly recommend this for anyone who likes Cthulu and who has ever worked in a cube farm.
So there’s this guy who knows more about computer programming than he should. When he accidentally writes an algorithm that threatens to destroy his neighborhood, a division of the British Intelligence rips him out of his old life and forces him to take a menial sys admin job for them for the rest of his life – or death! (Tough choice.) The guy manages to use his love of programming and dark magic to earn himself a tough, adventurous job as an agent for the division.
There are two stories in the book, the novel-length “Atrocity Archives” and the novella “The Concrete Jungle.”
The stories start out with depressing verisimilitude, with a bad supervisor who makes the guy’s life miserable, stupid users, and getting written up for coming in late to a meeting after an all-nighter. The guy’s home life, with two ubergeek roommates and a psycho on-off girlfriend, is a mess. As the story progresses, our guy transforms himself into a hero, gets a new girlfriend, gets promoted and [SPOILER] ends up having to kill his supervisor, who is attempting to destroy the world!!!11!!
Not terribly realistic. But deeply satisfying. Geed FTW.