https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/qntm-s-author-page
read it at Google Books
An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.
Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams...
But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?
Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.
No, this is not your first day.
This is a fantastic exploration of a particular SF/horror subgenre by the master himself. There are precursors and adjacent fiction - Langford's BLIT, the concept of "infohazards", The Laundry Files - but this is just on a different level.
Partly thanks to its origins on the web via the SCP Foundation project, the story is told in a series of vignettes, requiring the reader to deduce and piece together the whole story in their mind (until they can dimly perceive the vast outlines of...)
The text is philosophically interesting and narratively engaging. The horror will hit you in the guts, but also eat away slowly at your mind as you puzzle away at the implications (Thomas Ligotti retire binch!)
To say this is just typical of a qntm production is only to point out that he's consistently excellent.
It's only 200-odd pages long and a couple of quid on Google Play. In terms of various ratios (enjoyment/page, enjoyment/price, mindblows/page) this is probably the best book I've read this year. Go buy it! - Tom
This book reads like the Laundry Files weird older sibling.
Time jumps and memory gaps are used effectively to convey the struggle against inhuman threats to memory and identity.
The plot spirals inward, sprinkling clues like breadcrumbs for you to piece together. If you like that kind of thing (as I do) it's great. But if you are looking for a fast-paced read with spoon-fed information, then this is not the tale you are looking for. - Brent
These stories scared the crap out of me. I think the idea of memes that are self-camouflaging, that eliminate their own traces, reflects a deep existential unease and questions about epistemological uncertainty, in a moment when 40% of Americans are lost in conspiracy theories, compounded by the near certainty of a future in which we will be able to manipulate perception and memory in a far more profound way. How do we fight an enemy that denies its own existence? - James Hughes
“How would you fight something that kills you if you think about it?”
Take a second right now and really think about how a creature like that would work: one that can’t harm you until you know it exists, and by then – it’s too late . A monster that devours not just the victim, but the idea of the victim too. A thing whose footprints are the gaps in your mind where people you knew used to be.
“There is No Antimemetics Division” by qntm is the best kind of science fiction. It’s the kind that asks a smart question about the way the world could be and then truthfully, thoughtfully, answers it. It explores consequences – turning sometimes complicated scientific scenarios into narratives that leap off of the page and bury themselves at the back of your mind and the bottom of your gut. It fills pages with gripping characters, places, and things, which don’t just help to talk about the science, but harmonize with each other in a way that practically sings it to you.
It’s also deliciously gross and horrific, and oddly touching. It’s not a book without faults (the ending got a little out-there, even for me), but a perfect book to me is a book that I finish and then want to read again. This onr scratches the same itches that films like Ex Machina and Coherence do for me: stories that are interested in the human ramifications of a smart problem and hope the audience is too. It was a thrilling, refreshing, and thought-provoking ride. - Matt Woodcock
Truly original science fiction is rare, but somehow qntm has stuck on a whole vein of new ideas. This antimemetics concept is brilliant. There is a Lovecraftian element here, sure, and a whole host of other influences, but the way this narrative is told, and the intellectual core of it is really something that I've never encountered before.
This is a story about creatures that feed on information and memories, such that half of this novel is about people trying to guard their own memories - they are constantly remembering and forgetting. The plot is necessarily fragmentary to accomodate this. At first this book felt more like a collection of short stories than a novel, but that feeling didn't stick around. This is a novel, and all the little details are relevant.
I had never heard of qntm before I bought this book yesterday. To my shame, I just picked it up because I liked the cover and the title sounded cool. It's good to take a chance on something now and again. But in the end, I was really surprised. This is some of the best science fiction that I've read in a long while. - Felix
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870256-there-is-no-antimemetics-division
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
This story is complete.
- We Need To Talk About Fifty-Five
- Introductory Antimemetics
- Unforgettable, That's What You Are
- CASE COLOURLESS GREEN
- Your Last First Day
Interlude
Read this before Five Five Five Five Five.
- SCP-2256 by qntm
Five Five Five Five Five by qntm
This story is a direct sequel to There Is No Antimemetics Division. This story is complete.
- SCP-3125
- Where Have You Been All My Life
- Fresh Hell
- Ojai
- Immemorial
- CASE HATE RED
- Ará Orún
- Unthreaded
- Wild Light
- Blood/Brain
- Tombstone
- Epilogue: Champions Of Nothing
Here is some bonus material which for various reasons never made it into the actual Antimemetics Division stories or onto the wiki.
- Introductory Antimemetics (abandoned first draft)
- Haku
- Scenes from Your Last First Day
- Wheeler's God
- Things Foundationers Never Say Out Loud
- Unforgettable, That's What You Are (false start)
- Antimemetic Housepaint
- SCP-5XXX: You Can Still Save Her
- The Worst That Could Happen
qntm, Ra, 2021.
Magic is real.
Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There's magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It's what's next after electricity.
Student mage Laura Ferno has designs on the future: her mother died trying to reach space using magic, and Laura wants to succeed where she failed. But first, she has to work out what went wrong. And who her mother really was.
And whether, indeed, she's dead at all...
qntm, Fine Structure, 2021,
Fledgling physicist Ching-Yu Kuang has discovered a Rosetta Stone for all of physics, a treasure trove of advanced scientific breakthroughs beyond all imagination. Exotic energy, teleportation, FTL, parallel universes and near-infinitely more wonders are just within reach; a promise of paradise.
But every attempt to exploit this new science results in sabotage, chaos and destruction. And the laws of science themselves are changing with each experiment, locking out the new discoveries, directly altering the universe to make what should be possible impossible. While Ching watches, humanity's future is being stolen.
Because there's something wrong with his world. There's a fundamental flaw, a defect in its structure...
qntm, Ed, 2021.
Ed MacPherson is your college whiz-kid hyper-scientist: wormholes, time travel, heavy stellar engineering. When the aliens attack and you need a giant robot to fight them, he's your guy. When a galaxy goes missing, he's the one who misplaced it.
But there's something wrong in the dark layers of Ed's universe... and the problem might just be Ed himself...
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