Overtime

Name: Overtime
Author: Charles Stross

expanded short fiction 2009 The Laundry Files

Record

First published	2009
Original language	EN
Work type	short fiction
Canon status	expanded
Reader rating	3.92 (4,143 ratings, collected 2026-10-28)

Synopsis

Having failed to book his holiday leave in time, Bob Howard ends up as the Laundry's night duty officer over Christmas Eve. It is meant to be routine office work, but the season brings a visitor that every culture knows under its own name. Bob finds himself facing the Filler of Stockings, Lurker in Fireplaces, Bringer of Gifts, the ancient entity behind the figure of Santa Claus, and has to stop the grinchiest elder god imaginable from cancelling Christmas. The story shows how even the dullest Laundry duty can turn into a confrontation with horrors from beyond spacetime, and it was a Hugo finalist for Best Novelette in 2010.

Where it sits

Universe: The Laundry Files
Series: The Laundry Files core; position 13 of 15 in the series' recorded order
Author: Charles Stross

Awards (verified)

Hugo Award (Best Novelette), 2010: finalist

Notes

Novelette first published online by Tor.com in December 2009; set between The Fuller Memorandum and The Apocalypse Codex.
From the series record (The Laundry Files): The main sequence about the Laundry, Britain's secret occult intelligence agency, from Bob Howard's first field mission to the agency's end.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.

Publication order, within the series The Laundry Files: position 4 of 15: previous Down on the Farm (2008) · next The Fuller Memorandum (2010)

Sources

← The Laundry Files dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.