Paperback, 220 pages
English language
Published March 26, 2021 by Independently Published.
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 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.
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 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.
I loved every moment of this. You can kind of tell that it started life as a web series on a wiki if you squint a bit — but it’s every bit as gripping, mind-bending, moving, and downright fun as people say. (I guess I didn’t know going in that it would be fun? But it is.) I want more.
I quite enjoyed this book, and I'm taking a star off for something that isn't really the book's fault, just my taste. It got a bit more horror than I expected and liked, I more enjoyed the mind bending fun thought experiments of the different SCPs a lot more, it followed kind of a broken up story style that fit very well to the story told, and while it got pretty out there in the last 4th I ended up liking it quite a lot.
I quite enjoyed this book, and I'm taking a star off for something that isn't really the book's fault, just my taste. It got a bit more horror than I expected and liked, I more enjoyed the mind bending fun thought experiments of the different SCPs a lot more, it followed kind of a broken up story style that fit very well to the story told, and while it got pretty out there in the last 4th I ended up liking it quite a lot.
Unnerving and fragmentary, very satisfying exploration around questions of memory, trust, and institutional decay.
I should have read this slower, the book is fine. SCP lit in long form, done well. All creatures that cause you to forget them, or other things. It starts as short stories, and then the links start appearing.
Uses some Memento backwards story telling to keep the audience in the right mind frame. Too bleak for me by the end.
This is a series of stories with a bizarre premise I don't think i have seen in any other work in the covert intelligence agency internals genre. The greatest threats to humanity have the ability to disguise themselves by tampering with minds so they are either not perceived at all, or given no attention by the conscious mind, or removed from memory entirely afterwards. This allows them to do anything our kind world otherwise oppose and makes it nearly impossible to mount a defense without some powerful technology. There are a couple major characters working at the agency of the title whom we follow as they discover, over and over - they are the only ones who can counter a species-ending threat from some other universe. The mature of the mimetic threat causes even written documents to decay, so there are garblings and elisions when things get bad. At the …
This is a series of stories with a bizarre premise I don't think i have seen in any other work in the covert intelligence agency internals genre. The greatest threats to humanity have the ability to disguise themselves by tampering with minds so they are either not perceived at all, or given no attention by the conscious mind, or removed from memory entirely afterwards. This allows them to do anything our kind world otherwise oppose and makes it nearly impossible to mount a defense without some powerful technology. There are a couple major characters working at the agency of the title whom we follow as they discover, over and over - they are the only ones who can counter a species-ending threat from some other universe. The mature of the mimetic threat causes even written documents to decay, so there are garblings and elisions when things get bad. At the climax of the book an unwilling bystander outside of the foundation is drawn in to set into motion a plan to defeat the cosmic horror. I don't know how this kind of story could be told in any other medium and still be satisfying. The reader is the only one in the end to know what a sacrifice had been made by people utterly forgotten by the reconstructed world. Quite a storytelling feat.
If you like Charles Stross's "Atrocity Archives" or Doctor Who's "The Silence" story arc, you're going to love "There Is No Antimemetics Division".
It explores the idea of what would an anti-meme war look like. I understand that the story was originally serialized on a blog, but it fits together pretty well. The final act was great, but just shy of mind-blowing.
I give 5 stars sparingly, but I knew this deserved one just 50 pages in. Overall, a great addition to my new sci-fi canon, because this story stays with me. I think about it during the day, and I feel like it shifts my perspective in an interesting way. I intended to ship it to my fellow-sci-fi-loving mom after I was done, but it's got more Lovecraftian gore and body horror than she'd like.
If you like Charles Stross's "Atrocity Archives" or Doctor Who's "The Silence" story arc, you're going to love "There Is No Antimemetics Division".
It explores the idea of what would an anti-meme war look like. I understand that the story was originally serialized on a blog, but it fits together pretty well. The final act was great, but just shy of mind-blowing.
I give 5 stars sparingly, but I knew this deserved one just 50 pages in. Overall, a great addition to my new sci-fi canon, because this story stays with me. I think about it during the day, and I feel like it shifts my perspective in an interesting way. I intended to ship it to my fellow-sci-fi-loving mom after I was done, but it's got more Lovecraftian gore and body horror than she'd like.
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub.https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub.https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub.https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub.https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub.