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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
In terms of writing, 'There is No Antimemetics Division' leaves a lot to be desired. The prose can be pretty amateur, the plot structure was often either tedious or boring, and (in what seems to be typical of the sci-fi genre) characterization is wooden or nonexistent. That's actually fine—this is clearly meant to be a "concept" novel, not a literary one, and I'm more than inclined to evaluate it based on its ideas, not the actual text.
The first third of the book is, in that sense, fantastic. Through a series of loosely interconnected short stories in the same universe (I read this with zero prior knowledge of the SCP Foundation. You just generally assume you're in a universe where there's freaky shit and researchers secretly working on it & it fits anyway), qntm explores the concept of "antimemes"—entities with self-erasing properties. To deal with antimemes, there are whole host of either fascinating technologies—mnestic and amnestic drugs, the strongest of which can completely disable a person's ability to forget / remember and vice versa. Each short story reveals to us a different, terrifying dimension of antimemes—that the antimemetics division might be in a literal loop, that the containment unit on the research site ostensibly designed to contain an antimeme might actually be the only place in the universe where it is not present, that you can feed or attack an antimeme with data, mental proximity, information corrosion, etc. It's really original and I could totally see like, a Westworld-esque HBO show based around the concept of researchers working on antimemes and it would be a fantastic show.
However, it's when the story tries to become a "novel" that it becomes borderline unreadable. qntm tries to blow up the proportions of antimemes to be a whole "war" of human civilization against the ultimate antimeme, and it starts to feel like a teenage guy who's way too into science spitballing about like, the alien apocalypse. We're told that mnestic drugs can actually cause people to be able to see anti-memes that are usually invisible–which leads to a bunch of grotesque descriptions of severed limbs and giant spiders and murderous cowboys that are not particularly interesting. They actually serve to further confuse the conceptual background of the novel–I mean, didn't we established early on that there is some boundary between the physical and the conceptual when it comes to anti-memes?
And actually, the entire idea of an impossibly virulent anti-meme literally killing a human being just seems super random. The antimeme erases itself, it seems the natural concept would be that it renders all humans possessed of it but completely oblivious to its presence. This is kind of explored when qntm writes about how people become "not humans"—but it's just way too overwrought with descriptions about how, with natural antimeme immunity or mnestic drugs you can actually see their true gross form. It would be way more terrifying to write about an entire world filled with people who are all irreversibly changed in some way but completely unable to remember why, going through their lives as if ghosts. Also, why is SCP-3125 (hope that #'s correct) in particular so unable to contain? What does it even mean for it to "pervade" all of reality?
Some of the anomalies the book presented later on—like giantic species that would die if exposed to direct observation, again, the whole severed limbs thing, the massive stone that's the last relic of a civilization that died in an antimeme war—it was just like Uhhhhhhhh, okay bro. The book just tried to do way too much and became kind of like, random/spit-bally and consequently lost all its most interesting implications. It became a typical sci-fi apocalypse story. I basically had to force myself through the last 50 or so pages.
There were some interesting manipulations of the text I quite liked: describing the antimemes through procedural documents (later learned this is the whole premise of the SCP Foundation wiki), mirroring a character's loss of memory with redactions on the text that eventually consume entire pages and leave only certain phrases, that stitch together like incredibly disjointed poetry—that was super super cool. Also, dope cover art.
The first third of the book is, in that sense, fantastic. Through a series of loosely interconnected short stories in the same universe (I read this with zero prior knowledge of the SCP Foundation. You just generally assume you're in a universe where there's freaky shit and researchers secretly working on it & it fits anyway), qntm explores the concept of "antimemes"—entities with self-erasing properties. To deal with antimemes, there are whole host of either fascinating technologies—mnestic and amnestic drugs, the strongest of which can completely disable a person's ability to forget / remember and vice versa. Each short story reveals to us a different, terrifying dimension of antimemes—that the antimemetics division might be in a literal loop, that the containment unit on the research site ostensibly designed to contain an antimeme might actually be the only place in the universe where it is not present, that you can feed or attack an antimeme with data, mental proximity, information corrosion, etc. It's really original and I could totally see like, a Westworld-esque HBO show based around the concept of researchers working on antimemes and it would be a fantastic show.
However, it's when the story tries to become a "novel" that it becomes borderline unreadable. qntm tries to blow up the proportions of antimemes to be a whole "war" of human civilization against the ultimate antimeme, and it starts to feel like a teenage guy who's way too into science spitballing about like, the alien apocalypse. We're told that mnestic drugs can actually cause people to be able to see anti-memes that are usually invisible–which leads to a bunch of grotesque descriptions of severed limbs and giant spiders and murderous cowboys that are not particularly interesting. They actually serve to further confuse the conceptual background of the novel–I mean, didn't we established early on that there is some boundary between the physical and the conceptual when it comes to anti-memes?
And actually, the entire idea of an impossibly virulent anti-meme literally killing a human being just seems super random. The antimeme erases itself, it seems the natural concept would be that it renders all humans possessed of it but completely oblivious to its presence. This is kind of explored when qntm writes about how people become "not humans"—but it's just way too overwrought with descriptions about how, with natural antimeme immunity or mnestic drugs you can actually see their true gross form. It would be way more terrifying to write about an entire world filled with people who are all irreversibly changed in some way but completely unable to remember why, going through their lives as if ghosts. Also, why is SCP-3125 (hope that #'s correct) in particular so unable to contain? What does it even mean for it to "pervade" all of reality?
Some of the anomalies the book presented later on—like giantic species that would die if exposed to direct observation, again, the whole severed limbs thing, the massive stone that's the last relic of a civilization that died in an antimeme war—it was just like Uhhhhhhhh, okay bro. The book just tried to do way too much and became kind of like, random/spit-bally and consequently lost all its most interesting implications. It became a typical sci-fi apocalypse story. I basically had to force myself through the last 50 or so pages.
There were some interesting manipulations of the text I quite liked: describing the antimemes through procedural documents (later learned this is the whole premise of the SCP Foundation wiki), mirroring a character's loss of memory with redactions on the text that eventually consume entire pages and leave only certain phrases, that stitch together like incredibly disjointed poetry—that was super super cool. Also, dope cover art.
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A world set up by its clever concepts and questions, expanded to investigate the ramifications, and delivering on them fairly well. The writing could sometimes be too stilted especially at moments when the abstraction is at its peak and some flourishes could have explored more interesting paths, but the premise carries the weight all the way through.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I read a lot of SCP back in the day. Great among SCP narrative fiction, pretty good as SF.
Recommend.
Recommend.
Great concept, haven't read such good twists in a long time. The ending is a bit cliche but it's because in the second part of the book everything is just getting bigger and more horrifying so things get a bit saturated
+ Original idea
+ Epic and weird
+ Fast paced action, that keeps you hooked
Well, it's basically a well-crafted commercial sci-fi/speculative fiction, an intellectual blockbuster. Enternaining while you read it, but I can imagine myself wondering in the future what exactly I loved about this one.
I also still wonder if the concept of anti-memes is something unique, legitimate and coherent or just a glorified mix of imperceptible monsters, memory-suckers and infohazards.
+ Epic and weird
+ Fast paced action, that keeps you hooked
Well, it's basically a well-crafted commercial sci-fi/speculative fiction, an intellectual blockbuster. Enternaining while you read it, but I can imagine myself wondering in the future what exactly I loved about this one.
I also still wonder if the concept of anti-memes is something unique, legitimate and coherent or just a glorified mix of imperceptible monsters, memory-suckers and infohazards.
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No