There Is No Antimemetics Division

by qntm

Humanity is under assault by malevolent "antimemes"—ideas that attack memory, identity, and the fabric of reality itself—in this wickedly brainbending tale of science-fiction horror, an entirely reimagined and expanded version of the beloved online novel.

They’re all around us, hiding in plain sight.

One could be in the room with you, now, just to your left. You could be seeing it right now—but from this second to the next, you’ll forget that you did. If you managed to jot down a note, the paper would look blank to you afterwards.

These entities can feed on your most cherished memories, the things that make you you—and you’ll never even know anything changed.
They can turn you into a living ghost—make it so that you’re standing next to your spouse, screaming in their ear, and they won’t know you’re there.

They are the perfect predators, equipped with the ultimate camouflage—the ability to wipe out memories of their own existence.

And they aren’t just feeding on us. They’re invading.

But how do you fight an enemy when you can never even know that you're at war? How do you contain something you can't record or remember?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. No, this is not your first day.

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Audiobook, Weird Fiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 8, 2020

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm resisting the urge to write any sort of in-universe or knowing wink of a review, and you should too. It would be like whipping out your recorder and tooting along to a symphony orchestra.

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!

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a premise, fantastic. Full of interesting ideas and some great storytelling, especially when focusing on human interactions. However, in broad sweep a disappointing book. If you start from an interesting logical premise, then add a shaky idea on top, then continue stacking shaky ideas one after the other, then eventually you get to a point where anything is true, and any statement you make about the storyline can possibly be true as well - but you have no way of knowing.

A great idea, pushed too far.

[James Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

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?

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Call it fresh air or a wake-up slap—up to you. This work only grazes the surface of a beautiful concept. Hope this grows in time, because science fiction could definitely use more of it.

[K.J. Charles]

Well this did my head in, in a thoroughly involving and quite terrifying way. Deeply strange SF/cosmic horror with an organisation, the Antimemetics Division (yes there is one) (no there isn't) tasked with tracking down terrifying entities that can't be remembered, which is obviously a problem. It's deeply baffling and existentially scary at points, even tragic, but has enough light touches to keep the reader fully involved and make you care for the characters. Thoroughly compelling stuff: I couldn't stop reading. Strong recommend.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a constant challenge to wrap my head around conceptually, as well as follow the disjointed narrative structure. The concepts here are mind bending to the point of making my head hurt, akin to falling into the rabbit hole of a deep time travel paradox. The loosely stitched narrative, with frequent time jumps and memory gaps, feels like a trail of breadcrumbs that's been scattered by the wind, both compelling and confounding in turn. With effort at piecing the bits together, eventually a picture emerges of an epically bizarre struggle against apocalytpic, Lovecraftian horrors that threaten to usurp our reality by means of devouring human memory and identity. The challenge seems insurmountable. How do you combat enemies that actively eradicate all knowledge of themselves? Places and things that defy perception, manifesting as gaps in reality. The thrills and chills reflect a deep existential unease.

Lying somewhere in the hinterland between sci-fi and cosmic horror, this is far from a perfect novel, despite my five star rating. It is patchy and fragmented. Perhaps intentionally so, in fitting with the theme. Info dumps abound, and character development is scant. Nothing is spoon fed to the reader. It exacts a price, and is most certainly not for everyone. Yet the payoff is rewarding, as far as I can recall...

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Alex Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My book of the year.

Utterly unputdownable.

There Is No Antimemetics Division is a sci-fi horror thriller. It's a story about ▇▇ and ▇▇▇ with a lot of ▇▇▇▇▇▇, ▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇▇▇.

If you're a fan of ▇▇▇▇ then ▇▇ should probably ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇.

▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇.

Honestly, ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇.

5.0/5.0

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea is absolutely brilliant. Its implication on the story are refreshing and very amusing. The story gets mind-bending and the twists are pure pleasure. Honestly "The is no ..." is the most refreshing SF story I've read in a long time. At least the initial 50-60%. The final part gets very abstract - it's not a real world with a crazy twist anymore - the implications of the changes introduced by author are so deep and far-going that it pretty much loses the connection with the reality we can and that makes the book even more abstract. In my case it made me lose my interest.

Nevertheless, I recommend this one wholeheartedly:
* it's short, pure meat
* it's cheap
* it's unique
* it's brilliant

Very good stuff.
4.2 stars.

[Kamil Kuryś · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea was indeed brilliant but because of it's scattered structure and intentional plot holes I had trouble immersing in it. Each time things started to line up and make sense, author jumped elsewhere in time/memory space therefore it was exploited too far up to a point where unfortunately I didn't care too much about the characters or the plot.

[Matt W · Rating 5 out of 5]

“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 answers it. It explores consequences – turning complicated 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’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 is a story that's interested in the human ramifications of a smart problem and it hopes the audience is too. It was a thrilling, refreshing, and thought-provoking ride.

[Paul H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly good. Easily the best work of fiction related to SCP, which is mostly mediocre Reddit-teenager creepypasta, though maybe there are some gems out there that I'm not aware of. In this sense, Antimemetics Division is reminiscent of Kane Pixels taking the Backrooms and making actual art out of it.

Anyway, Hughes’s book is good for sci-fi, less impressive as actual literature, but I've slowly learned to lower my standards and just go along for the ride, when possible; the prose is just good enough to not be distractingly bad, and for a self-published $0.99 Kindle novel . . . I mean, I'll take it.

The idea/non-idea of antimemetics has been addressed before — in the Laundry Files and other middling-at-best SF, and most memorably in one of my favorite short stories of all time (Rick Moody's 2003 "The Albertine Notes") — but Antimemetics Division takes the concept in a clever Lovecraftian pop-SF direction.




2025 edit: Reread four years later . . . this book is seriously good, slightly better than I'd remembered, the main thing is that Hughes just needed an editor. The prose is actually not as bad as I'd vaguely recalled; the issue is that it's just first-draft-ish? The writing itself isn't weak, rather it's vaguely . . . untidy. And yeah I dunno man, purely as speculative fiction, this book is 9 out of 10, Hughes could easily be another Ted Chiang in the near future.

[Dor · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Sci-Fi was made for.

Suffers a little due to its structure and method of creation, and its goodness is heavily front-loaded, but still warrants a 5 due to extreme creativity and mind-fuckery.

[Felix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly original science fiction is rare, but somehow qntm has struck 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.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published November 11, 2025.

4 stars

I had heard of this book before and it sounded fascinating, so I was excited to see it as an ARC choice.

It’s (mostly) the story of Marie Quinn, the Antimemetics Division chief (because there is a division. And we should be damn glad.). The Division collects “unknowns,” “phenomena in the world that actively defied reason.” But if you are thinking spooky dolls you couldn’t be more off base. These are… bigger. Weirder. Scarier. Think potentially world destroying. Maybe worse. And part of the fun(?) is reading about them.

This dark, demented and really good. I don’t want to give anything away, but it has a really satisfying (for me) ending and I so appreciated the creativity here…it’s rare to come across something like this (for me, anyway) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m not doing a great job at reviewing it because it’s just one of those books where I don’t want to give anything away. It’s good.

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0 Stars
This is a unique science fiction story. It started out as a fun ride, reminiscent of something Peter Clines might write, but then evolved into something more serious.

I’m honestly not entirely sure I “got it” but I enjoy the pieces of the story. I’m always on the lookout for unique stories and this one certainly fits that bill. I would recommend it to fellow sci-fi readers looking for a different kind of story. It might have been a little too weird for my personal tastes.

[Booksblabbering || Cait❣️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was WILD.
Imagine working in an organisation that no one remembers. A division that deals with Unknowns with dangerous memetic properties. There are contagious ideas, which require containment just like any physical threat. Viral concepts. They get inside your head, and ride your mind to reach other minds.

Imagine forgetting hours or days of your time and accepting that’s a normal part of your work. Imagine being aware invisible monsters exist, but you can’t be aware these monsters exist otherwise you might not exist….

WILD.
This had me spiralling. I binged this and took my time with it. I wanted to stretch my experience whilst setting myself limits to how much I could read of this book a day.
It got into my head.

This is like Annihilation, but far more satisfying and understandable. Or maybe I have just always harboured a fear there have always been Unknowables in our universe.

The character cast is tight and the growth minimal, especially considering they keep forgetting their role. However, as someone who prefers character-focused stories, I was hooked.

The formatting was also note-worthy. There are case files, redacted words or sentences, and almost two storylines going on.

I had the physical arc, but apparently if you highlight the redacted parts in the ebook, secret messages appear. I am very tempted to try shining lights on my own copy LOL.
(Update - I did try, it only works on the cover.)

Physical arc gifted by Del Rey.

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[AndaReadsTooMuch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no recollection of reading this book. I’m kidding. I do. Or a version of me does. Or says it does. But is it this me or another me? How many mes read this book? Who’s to say. Is it good? You’d have to read the entry. Do you have the clearance? Are you who you say you are? Do you remember who you are? Are you still them? Which version? How many times?

Are you sure?
Am I?

[cardulelia carduelis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The scary thing about this book is that I'm not entirely convinced that it's fiction.

This will undoubtedly be haunting my nightmares for years to come.
So yes, it is scary.
However, it is also excellent. Intriguing, fast paced, surprisingly well written for the length/pace/genre.
The opening 5 chapters are the best by far.

I don't want to tell you anything, just go read it. Not before bed though.
My brain is still reeling.
I'm going to go shelve this somewhere outside of my direct eyeline. Out of sight out of mind?

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book hit my radar when I searched for books similar to the vibe of the videogame “Control”. If you’re not familiar with that, the premise of the game is that there is a Department of Control, which handles all sorts of unexplained, and unexplainable, objects and events, and is linked to another dimension. The office of the Department is called The Oldest House, and it is constantly shifting and moving, and to get to certain areas, you have to transfer via a sort of portal that appears to be an old motel. It’s a bit dark, and creepy, and infested with beings called The Hiss after an incursion from an Altered Object opening a portal for them. Whoops!

I really love that game. I’ve played through it several times already, and I really just love the lore and the creepy vibes and the weirdness and all of it. So I wanted to find books like it. And I’m pretty sure that a Reddit forum led me to this. I requested that my library acquire a copy, and when they did, I jumped on it (and tried to ignore the nagging line of people waiting on me to finish it).

Overall, I would say that I liked this a lot. There’s a lot of really freaking cool ideas and concepts in this, OR ARE THERE?? The main premise here is that there’s a division of some sort of scientific research/containment/policy power that deals with ideas, or more accurately, memes. We’re all familiar with memes, this IS the internet, but I admit, I never ever thought of them in THIS context.

A meme is an idea that spreads from person to person within a culture and has a specific or symbolic meaning. The Memetics Division deals with ideas that stick. They literally cannot be forgotten or ignored. They take over the mind of the person who encounters it, like a cult you can’t escape or ignore or be rescued from. This organization finds and isolates those ideas, and prevents their spread.

But wait, you say. The title of this book is “There Is No Antimemetics Division”. What the hell is antimemetics? Tis the opposite, silly. Antimemes are ideas you can’t remember. They slip away, or can’t be viewed in the first place. Recordings of them simply fade, and even if they don’t as soon as you stop viewing them, you can’t remember what you were looking at anyway.

There’s a big crisis coming, but if you are aware of it… it’s aware of you, and that is fatal. How do you fight something you literally cannot know about? Is that even possible?

This book was a wild ride of me feeling completely out of my depth conceptually, but somehow still really liking it anyway? It was recursive in that it uses a nonlinear narrative to circle back to reveal scenes from the past, but also recursive in that memory is altered in this book. A LOT. Memories are lost, recovered, eaten, reformed, stripped chemically and surgically, etc. People who work in this division have numerous first days on the job. It’s just the nature of the gig.

I finished this not really understanding all the details that led to the resolution, and I feel like if I was to try to track them, it would be like [insert meme of the guy with the conspiracy thread board]. It’s convoluted and very high concept, but never really felt inaccessible. (At least to me, but I acknowledged my ineptitudes in the conceptual genius realm necessary, and just accepted it at the value given, and moved on.)

I really liked the depiction of the relationship in this book as well. I will not give anything away, because I think even naming them would be sort of spoilerish, but I thought that the way it was written was very well done. At first, though, I admit I didn’t. It seemed stilted and awkward - until I realized that was intentionally intentional. Brilliant. Really good stuff.

I liked how there were multiple perspective narrators. It definitely kept me on my toes as far as who was “safe” or likely to make it through to the end with me. I love an author willing to declare noone safe.

I am really not sure where I’m going with this. At this point it’s just random thoughts I’m typing as they pop into my brain. So I’ll end it here by just saying, this was a freaking cool book, and explored ideas in the way that I most enjoy - with a great and compelling story attached. I will keep my eyes open for more of qntm’s work.

[Katia N]

In February 2002 Donald Rumsfeld has given a speech that has become infamous:

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.

He was trying to convince the Americans to go to war against Iraq. The concept of 'unknown unknowns' though has become something of a meme (Though I believe the latter word was an 'unknown known' in 2002). The approach is now widely used in culture, business and academia, especially for risk analysis. The matrix depiction of this is here.

Ironically, the speech has appeared to be a good harbinger to our current times in its paradox of absurdity combined with penetrating logic. I wish we would know some unknown unknowns then that we know now. This book is however not about any of the Donalds or their politics. One can say this book is dealing with unknown unknowns that, to some extent, cannot even be ‘knowable’ directly. Some cool kids were talking about the book on a cool podcast admiring the scale of its imagination and the plot. Then i’ve started to notice it everywhere in bookshops and decided to give it a go.

It belongs to a sci-fi genre and apparently it has got ‘elements of horror’. I have to admit that i’ve read three sci-fi books in total in the last decade, so I am not familiar with the tropes etc. But the book was entertaining enough though i am not sure about the ‘horror’ bit. Watching the news is much more of a horror.

The premise of a book is an ‘anti-meme’. All people are affected by the phenomena of a meme one way or another. It could be a silly clip or a ‘sticky’ song but also it could be an idea that become ‘viral’ and spreads around often affecting the behaviour of a wider community or a society as a whole. In my case, the good example of a meme was this book. I’ve read a few pages and thought i would put it aside. But next morning i’ve awaken with the author’s thought experiment in my head -meme/anti-meme tension- and i could not resist finding out where he would take it.

In this novel, the author imagines something opposite to a meme: what if there would be something that actively resist to cognitive spread. Such things exist in daily life. For some people it could be a multiplication table nowadays. But in more imaginative context, what if there would be a creature that protects itself by making other creatures immediately forget of its existence? But what if this creature is alien, aggressive and uses this power to attack and invade. This is the premise. And he develops it by inventing different kind of creatures and then - a secret organisation (anti-memetic division) devoted to fighting this phenomena and protecting the realm, kind of a secret service. The biggest hazard the member of this organisation faces is that she cannot rely on her memory, so each fight starts from scratch unless she finds some way to record or reinstate her memory, even if partially. The big dramatic multiple battles insure.

The result is quite gripping and entertaining. The novel has been initially published in instalments. It is evident by the stories lacking a consistent continuation between the chapters, especially in the first half. Some adventures are better than the others. But it is becoming more consistent towards the end. Also some poignancy on the human level shines through as well.

In terms of the plot some elements, has reminded me of His Dark Materials upgraded for a bit more advanced audience. The one of the main characters even loses his digits, for example. Also in Pullman's book, the fight initially is conducted by the individuals vs an entrenched evil organisation. While here the idea of a secret organisation protecting ‘the realm’ being a force for good was very pleasant, but desperately idealistic. It made me feel as quite a sad and old person. Still it was nice to see that good has got courage in spades to fight evil.

I was more attracted by philosophically non-trivial ideas: how one fights with a memory lose (with all its poignant relevancy to real life)? How one would chose what to discard and what to remember in case one would have this power; and in more broader, more speculative terms: if it would be a way to wipe out collective memories of certain technologies and events (nuclear weapons and the Holocaust, let’s say) should we do it as a society?

Another idea was more of a platonic nature: the author imagines an info-space where all ideas, good or bad, small and big, exist in multidimensional clusters and are connected to each other. So the argument goes if one can entail an idea by physically designing an object corresponding to it, can this relation work other way: can the complexity of a biological entity like a human, for example, be transported into this ideal space in some form? It is a bit akin ‘brain in a vat’ thought experiment. But I can transgress too far so I leave it at that.

In addition, I’ve learned a lot of new concepts. Maybe i am the last person in the world with this, but i did not know that the term ‘cognitohazard’ has spilled out into general use. Consequently, it has obtained a close cousin ’infohazard’. The latter i’ve managed not hear about at all.

This is the definitions taken from internet (Wiki and Gemini)

cognitohazard (neurology, chiefly science fiction) - A sensory signal (such as an imageor sound) that directly causes harmful or undesired physiologicaleffects to one who senses or perceives it. 
Coordinate terms: infohazard, memetic hazard
The symbol on that piece of paper is a cognitohazard which puts everyone who reads it in a week-long coma.
memetic hazard


infohazard (information hazard) is true information that poses a risk of harm, either to the person who knows it or to others, if it spreads, ranging from catastrophic (like weapon blueprints) to more subtle dangers (like specific psychological triggers). Coined by philosopher Nick Bostrom, it challenges the idea that all information should be free by highlighting knowledge that can be exploited or inherently dangerous, with examples like nuclear codes, extremist ideologies, or even fictional concepts like Roko's Basilisk. 

The book is dealing with invented cognitohazards of all different sorts and shapes. But it has lead me to this concept of ‘infohazard (fortunately not in the book) that has appeared to be for me an infohazard by itself (very meta I know!). Since i’ve learned about this, i keep noticing infohazards around everywhere and they make me feeling somewhat ‘spooked’. Fortunately, i am grown-up enough not to take all of this too seriously.

Consider, for example, nutrition. If you go on-line for information, sugar and salt are simply horror (more scary than anything in this book). Ok. They say you were supposed to eat a lot of protein; but then red meat needs to be eaten only organic high quality and in moderation: the hazards are fat, what they feed animals with, slaughter, environmental impact etc. Fish then? Better, but contains mercury etc. and there is overfishing to consider. Pulses and nuts? Better: they also contain fibre. Oh, but what about pesticides? Organic then (if one can find them and afford them). But no - anti-nutrients are a danger. I spare you what the nuts apparently can do:-) Coffee machine, water bottles, paper cups? Microplastics and environment! Infohazard is huge as everything is not god enough to eat. The best is just to have 2 cups of an organic coffee a day brewed in a moka pot and nothing else, not even a blueberry (unless you grow one yourself) -but three cups of coffee might be too many! But maybe, only maybe there is another alternative: to jump off the internet and eat sensible, measured diet of things you like. You would certainly mitigate this particular infohazard in this way.

Roko’s Basilik has appeared to be a big one. I did not know of it at all. Apparently it is out there since 2010. I can see how it might affect someone in the target audience and further stimulate the madness of the AI race.

In this respect, the book was quite educational. Its pre-history was interesting as well. The novel has taken its route in a niche internet sub-culture. There is a collaborative writing community ‘SCP wiki’ that apparently has been on-line since 2008. They invent fictional paranormal or otherwise anomalous phenomena (in Donald’s speak: unknown unknowns); they describe them in certain way; device ‘protocols’ to ‘contain’ them and comment on each other’s work.

I have to admit that being an off-line person, i’ve never given a thought to the possibility of this type of internet sub-cultures and communities. I’ve known of course that some people mainly exist on-line and a generation has grown up in this environment. But i could not imagine the diversity and the granularity of these sub-cultures. I still do not know much about all of this. But to some extent, this phenomenon explains the level of faith in certain ‘transformational’ projects that have spilled out into the reality from internet and now affect the imagination of the masses and stock markets.

On a smaller scale, the emergence of a such commercial hit of a book out such a niche community is very impressive as well.

I do not plan to become a fan of the genre, but it's a one off, it was a surprisingly insightful breezy read. Now I am back to my more native pastures in terms of reading.

[Queralt✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not know this would be a book inspired by (?) the SCP Foundation project and I admit my knowledge about it is limited. I have never read the SCP creepy pasta stuff, but I have played SCP-inspired video games like Lobotomy Corp so I am to a degree familiar with the whole ‘anomalies’ and their files and the vignette-style story telling in-between containment breaches and so forth.

I thought the writing was merely okay, the characters really didn’t work for me (and honestly, calling people by their last name only when you have a married couple is annoying), and the story didn’t provide anything new. If I was less familiar with SCP crazyness, then maybe, but I’ve had so many situations and anomalies causing chaos in my Lobotomy Corp facility to know how things go down. I did think some of the anomalies sounded really cool and I wish we had had more files to just read and other anomalies present.

2.5 rounded down because it just didn’t do anything for me and I skimmed quite a bit at the end because I was getting an aneurysm trying to put things together. I do get that anomalies messing up with reality can be hard to write, but this confused me to a point I didn’t understand why I was reading anything, someone would die, then that someone would be alive but not the other person, then that person would not be there but be alive, etc.

[Lukasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh man, what a trip! I heard it was weird, but I didn’t expect this level of weirdness. The Antimemetics Division is one of the SCP departments that deals with "antimemes." Huh? Essentially, “antimemes” are information black holes that prevent any knowledge about them from being retained or communicated.

Getting the hang of it requires a lot of mental gymnastics, but once you get past the beginning, everything becomes... Nah. Who am I kidding? It’s dizzyingly complex but also kind of fascinating.

It reads like a unique blend of weird fiction, sci-fi, and cosmic horror, told in a non-linear and scattered way. I found the book fascinating because of its weirdness and cool take on a cosmic horror. Objectively speaking, though, the prose is rather subpar and the characters flat. If you're looking for a great literary experience, this isn't it. If you're here to dig into a very interesting mythos handled uniquely, then you will love this.

Read it for fun and only if you’re okay with being confused most of the time :)

[Will · Rating 1 out of 5]

Goodreads says I have read this book, but j have no recollection of doing so. In fact, I have it on good authoritythere is no such book.

[Shawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

”Silence will fall, Doctor.”

I've never read the SCP Foundation Wiki (although I'm aware of its existence) so I don't know if I was missing out on anything when reading this novel. Certainly, it seems to assume a certain familiarity with the subject since it wastes little time explaining what the SCP Foundation is or what they do. This didn't really detract from my enjoyment, but it could have done with a bit of fleshing out for the uninitiated. Maybe show us an unrelated case before getting to the main story? There’s a lot of opportunity for world building here that effectively goes to waste.

The narrative itself is very disjointed – which is to be expected, really, given the nature of the story – but there’s an overall lack of cohesion. Everything is presented as a series of vignettes that jump back and forth with no clear indicator of their place in the timeline. As a result, it didn't feel much like a proper story to me - more like a series of spoopy posts on /r/nosleep.

Even so, I was enjoying it. Until it very blatantly jumped the shark somewhere around the 70% mark. Once the author introduced the idea of the "noösphere", my interest tanked. I tried for weeks to come back and finish this and I just couldn't do it. I eventually decided to DNF it @ 85% - which seems ridiculous to me. Just finish out the last little bit, right? But I couldn't do it. I didn't care.

[Nel · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is based on SCP foundation and i think some familiarity with the canon is required here.
some really cool fresh ideas. the stories from part 1 worked better for me, part 2 kinda outstayed its welcome, hence the rating. plus as fascinating as antimemes are, they are far from being my fave SCPs.

[Whitney (SecretSauceofStorycraft) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intruging intro made me think about a tv show called warehouse 13, since this book is about a secret government agency that deals with congtagious ideas or their opposite ideas which cant spread. The internal workings of the agency and how people do or dont remember, & the individual objects the agency deals with were all the best part of this story.

However, along the way the author took a weird abstract turn not just in plot but also in tone that in the end didnt work for me. Which is too bad. The focus became unclear, the future too hopeless and insurmountable and the point of the story too obsequious to grasp and overall, I became uninterested.

If you dont mind weird fiction with weird endings, thiss might be for you.

[Akankshya (why are my comments limited) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread 2025: I stand by everything I said. Still a brilliant unique book.

Science fiction stories can be eerie at times, but this one was beyond terrifying. Brilliant concept, commendable execution. Reading it felt like a fever dream. I found myself rereading just after completing it almost compulsively. This is a unique novel with an unconventional style of writing and a plot on a different level of inventiveness. Five stars for blowing my mind out of the water.

[Strega Di Gatti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-experiment masquerading as a novel, but a fantastic experiment at that. It was fun to wrap my brain around the idea of fighting something that you can't retain any knowledge about. An unexpected "quest" format worked really well here as characters accessed drips of information and moved towards an intricately plotted resolution. 

Nitpickers beware! Yes, there are a few wobbly-logic bits you'll need to hand-wave as "timey wimey / jeremy beremy" sort of stuff. Just go with it. You can read Neal Stephenson next.

And, it's always good to see a scifi or fantasy novel proving that exceptionally gifted protagonists don't need to be teenagers. Cheers to the heroic middle-aged women trying to save the world. 

[Nina The Wandering Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There is an invisible monster which follows me around and likes to eat my memories," Marion explains, patiently. "SCP-4987. Don't look it up, it's not there. I've learned to manage with it. It's like a demanding pet. I produce tasty memories on purpose so it doesn't eat something important, like my passwords or how to make coffee."

This was like nothing I've ever read before, and also probably a sign from the universe that I need to read more science fiction!