I just finished this book and complained about it the whole time. The prose is amateur and peppered with cliches (e.g. you should be fined for publishing the phrase "their suit was so sharp it could cut"). His attempt to write about the inner thoughts of the characters was pretty simple. The descriptions of violence and horror also felt child-like, especially the dialogue during those moments (e.g. Redd's introduction). The landscapes are bland, with lots of repetition. Personally, the redaction technique got boring fast when he would take up entire pages of the book to convey absent memories. He could use his words to convey this instead of black-boxes.<p>I will give the author credit on how they deal with their characters' memories and the re-development of their thoughts, and the usage of time-jumping was reasonable (some books jump around too much, as if these time-skips improve a boring plot). Also the convention for how they solve their dilemma was enjoyable.<p>Overall, I think the author relies too much on a vocal fandom around the SCP Foundation to glorify the book. I think there is potential for a saga of books but there needs to be more effort in the drafting and editing process to raise the quality of the books to the level the universe deserves.
I'd push back on the redaction point. One of the primary conceits of the book is that the information is <i>generally</i> affected, which includes the contents of the book itself. While doing multiple pages is kinda taking the piss, the general idea is much better than just verbally stating it is hard to remember.
Do you have any recommendations for science fiction books that explore interesting ideas?<p>There is no Antimemetics Division was really interesting in how some of the scenarios play out. I don't read much but I've been trying to do that more. I really liked the book.<p>Things like the memory consuming entity, async research, etc I enjoyed.
Annihilation By Jeff VanderMeer<p>Diaspora by Greg Egan<p>Anathem by Neal Stephenson (this one is a bit like doing homework but worth it imo)<p>If you vibe with short stories
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Crystal Nights by Greg Egan isn't bad either
I love all these. I'd add Blightsight by Peter Watts to the list. It has the creepy, psychological bent of Annihilation combined with the hard science elements common to qntm's, Neal Stephenson's and Greg Egan's books.
Great list, thanks. Seconding Exhalation, that story in particular but also the whole collection. Guess I'm checking out Egan next.
I really like Ray Nayler’s work, who intersects his real experience in international politics with science fiction technology. His Tusks of Extinction uses the sci-fi notion of brain transfer and bringing back mammoths to explore the economical pressures behind poaching. His “Where the axe is buried” explores surveillance state technology with political bodies that feel like real modern nations.
Blindsight by Peter Watts explores interesting ideas about conscience and intelligence, but these ideas are wrapped in a mediocre action movie plot that becomes nonsensical by the end.
Have you read free online version or 2025 edited/paid one from penguin books or what have you?
This article says “Book Review:” but then doesn’t provide the title of a book. I’m confused.<p>:)
I tried making this joke to the author when the book was released ("I purchased the book, but the link just took me to an empty page") and, unfortunately, they didn't get it and tried to give me customer support
Whoa, you mean bringing terminally online memes into the real world is awkward and cringe? How unexpected
What are you talking about? Did you perhaps cross-post by accident to the wrong thread?
It's in the title: "There is no Antimemetics Division"
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870256-there-is-no-antimemetics-division" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870256-there-is-no-ant...</a>
I suppose this joke only works when you've read it. I should take my meds, else I'll forget.
You can’t forget to take class W mnestics. Not unless someone prevents you from taking them.
Just took mine. Please take proper quarantine measures when reading back these comments then, or you'll put us all at risk.
Log entry: Tried building a wall out of hard drives, but Gate walked around them and kept coming. Walls of information ineffective. I've forgotten my name, so I suspect this may be my final entry.
What article?
I dislike the ending, at least of v2. In it, the author basically gives a fleshed out (christian, neoplatonist) metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.
The last 2 chapters made me not want to recommend the book. I’m so divided about it because the book started of incredibly strong.
This has been my feeling on Dune book 4 - God Emperor of Dune. While it contains several great banger quotes, it leans way more conservative than the previous books to the point that it was difficult to finish. "Oh no, female warriors kissing! ICK!!" and Leto's whole "Humanity _NEEDS_ me as GOD EMPEROR because this IS JUST THE ONLY WAYYY!" are just some examples.
Book 1-3 of Dune are masterpieces IMO. Book 4 was still good although I didn’t enjoy it as much as the trilogy. But I still consider it part of the same overall “Leto/Paul arc”.<p>Book 5-6 were okay, but didn’t live up to expectations.<p>To go on more of a tangent, I really thought these books would be impossible to turn into films, but the Villeneuve films are good so far!
I think you may have missed the point of GEoD
I don't think this is much of a spoiler: in Ra (same author) you get just what you're looking for and, ironically, that's with another revised ending. Even with the christianic subtext, which is at times manifest. I've read both and the writing is overall superior. As it should be, antimemetics is his first work I think? Writers have historically become good from mere practise.
Did I lose chapters or is v1 horribly different? It was so psychologically defeating I was in a very weird malaise for a week.
It's the strongest possible memetic weapon humans would have - I think it's entirely consistent with the meta-nature of the book, especially the self-conscious part.
If the take is religion is itself the weapon and the depiction given is mere evidence of that, OK, that's at least avoids the ending being totally awful. HOWEVER<p>The book spends much of its time saying the transcendent cannot even be represented, to people, to us the read -- then just represents it, and in a tawdry christian way.<p>I think the violation of that norm, as well as the ending being played straight -- with literally a long paragraph explaining with ideaspace is... that's a fourth-wall break into christianity imv<p>Which makes the whole book read as, "the issue with humans is our physical bodies in a fallen world which are limited. just die, go to heaven, then you can know/represent/understand everything. Yay! Death!"<p>OK. Just kinda naff.<p>It reads as a religious person who accidentally wrote a good sci-fi book then hurridly, at the end, reminds us all that its really a parable with a Noble Message that in Death all things are trascended.
> metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.<p>FWIW, this just seems to be what’s popular now. Pretty regularly now, I’ll see social media posts and memes mocking [media franchise X] for being anything other than that very basic good vs evil plot with clean resolution, as if these people didn’t have plenty of Marvel slop to consume.<p>I will say this is tangential to the culture war, but seems to exist outside of it too.
You can read the original here <a href="https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub" rel="nofollow">https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub</a><p>There is also the rough draft. I've only read the wiki and the first draft of book<p>Oddly I gifted the actual book away before reading it (I can buy it again, I thought)
The core conceit lent itself so well to a (subverted) introductory "As you know" chapter that I didn't even notice it until I'd read it. Bravo for that alone.<p>That said, from the review: "open source maintainership as cosmic horror." Genuine laugh.
I liked this one a lot. If you like weird fiction and enjoyed Jeff Vandermeer's Annhilation, there's a good chance you'll like this.<p>If you don't like weird fiction, odds are you'll bounce off it.
This review is just a plot synopsis. There are no quotes from the book to give me a sense of the quality of the writing. The review feels targeted at somebody who is already bought into the premise, not somebody from the outside who wants to know if "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is a good book or not. In that sense, it totally fails as a book review.
I have never read a review and got a true notion of whether the prose is good or not. Is that really why you read reviews? I thought this was a great review because it very concisely described what is an unorthodox book. If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book. It is a good book by the way.
Yes, I read reviews to learn if a book is good or not. Quotes from the book that are carefully selected often help to showcase what the author is capable of, on top of a clear description of their writing style. I want the reviewer to sell me on what moved them.<p>That is different than whether or not the reviewer was compelled by the ideas in the book. If the reviewer is a good writer, then I've learned something. Then, I know that somebody who is a good writer thought the ideas in a book were interesting, which by the transitive property, implies the author being reviewed is also a good writer. In this case, I don't think the reviewer is a very interesting writer, so I'm not convinced that they are a good judge of interesting writing.
It sounds like you're describing a summary (which does not deal with quality) rather than a review (which necessarily deals with quality). The posted writing seems to fall somewhere in between.
> If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book.<p>I don't read complete plot summaries of books that I ever plan to read. That's why I look for "reviews." The only reason it's hard to write a review is because you can't give away the plot, but you have to give a sense of the appeal and the quality of the book. Otherwise, it's just a summary.<p>I can't know what books are available on the market through introspection. The only way I can know about them is through being informed. I don't want to read a complete plot summary of a book I have yet to read. If the only way I can find out about the existence of books is by having the plot spoiled, that's not optimal.<p>edit: Also, tbh, if a book's plot is good, I don't need you to tell it to me. The person who came up with the plot already carefully came up with the way they wanted to tell it to me. Not sure why you think you can do better if you think the book is good. If the book is awful to read but the plot is interesting, feel free.<p>> It is a good book by the way.<p>The reason this doesn't work as a review is because I don't know you, and I don't know what you like. If you can say this in a way in which it doesn't matter whether I know you or what you like, and give away the least plot possible to accomplish this, you've written what most people are looking for in a review.
If you say to just read the book then what's even the point of writing a review? I could say the same about any book which renders the advice meaningless.
The review is also heavily LLM-inflected, to the point of being distracting.<p>GPTZero gives it a 100% chance of being AI generated, and I've found that these tools may give false negatives from a well-prompted model, but false positives are rare.<p>If you are looking to tune your intuition for AI-written text, here's an interesting list of their quirks (ironically provided as a Claude skill for removing those quirks from emitted text):<p><a href="https://github.com/stephenturner/skill-deslop/blob/main/references/structures.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/stephenturner/skill-deslop/blob/main/refe...</a>
I've noticed this too online and on YouTube, where "reviewers" conflate a plot summary with an actual review of the pros and cons and often deeper analysis of a work. These days I need to go to specific subreddits to get true reviews beyond surface level details, such as at r/TrueFilm.
It's not a well-written book. It's an interesting book (more like a story).
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24 days ago: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363133">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363133</a>
There's also a short web series which is very good: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3ywOKVBeAp1CmOhpsfueY2U5cLN84wN" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3ywOKVBeAp1CmOhpsfu...</a><p>I haven't seen the short film, so cannot compare.
Really didn't like this adaptation.
I wonder if this is for the rewrite or the first version.<p>I read the first version and thought the first half was good and that the second half felt clunky. To the point where i don’t recommend it to anyone (not a huge negative, there’s just better books out there).
It seems to be for the first version, judging by the use of the original names, which is odd because the review's from this year.<p>The rewrite definitely improves on the ending and its delivery, but it's still largely the same plot, so it may not address all of your issues.
The author’s other stories like <i>Ra</i> and <i>Fine Structure</i> have the same issue, in my opinion. He has interesting ideas, but cannot seem to write an ending.
This review appears to be of the first version despite the recent date. (The rewrite filed the serial numbers off the SCP references and changed character names both for copyright reasons and to provide a degree of separation from the original.)<p>I read both versions and agree that the second half of the first version was very abstract and difficult to follow. While I would consider the first half of the new version more edited than rewritten, the second half got a significant overhaul which fixed almost all of my issues with it and made for (in my opinion) a much more satisfying ending. I would recommend giving the new version another chance, though those who read the first version may find the new character names distracting. (Most didn't bother me, but Marion Wheeler -> Marie Quinn never felt quite right.)
I had the opposite reaction. The second half was garbage, but the first half was so good and original I'd recommend it just for that.
Same!
I just finished the book a few days ago. The first half is really good, a cool premise and interesting story. The second half just got a bit too weird for me and by the final chapter I was happy it was finished lol.
> the first half was good and that the second half felt clunky<p>> The second half was garbage, but the first half was so good<p>so you had the same reaction?
The first few chapters of that book are some of the coolest I've ever read. I agree it really drops off in the second half, but would still recommend it to people.
The rewrite is excellent
Short film: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363133">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363133</a><p><pre><code> My mission was to create a Sci-fi Noir episode of the Twilight Zone by way of David Lynch and Phillip K. Dick. Big shout out to Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller for speaking to my soul in Severance. And of course to the enigmatic QNTM for sparking my imagination with the original story, "We Need to Talk About 55". Long live the SCP Foundation.</code></pre>
I read whatever version of this book was available to download in 2020 and really enjoyed it. Some very original ideas. I didn't find the writing clunky, and I read way too much.
It's surely not a great book and if you are someone who reads a book every few months i wouldn't recommend it. It's very weird and different and fun, though. I suggest it for people who read a lot of sci-fi and are looking for something that doesn't feel the same as 10 other books they've already read.
I'm smack dab in that "reads a book every few months" demographic, and also in that "people who work with formal systems for a living" demographic mentioned in this book review.<p>I would absolutely recommend it for people in the vicinity of these two demographics. It's worth it for the originality. Both the plot and the storytelling format are very weird and very original.
Yeah my take is the exact opposite. It's such a page turner that the book has become one of my default recommendations for people looking to get back into reading. Of course you have to be a certain type of nerd to appreciate it.
I happen to be in the middle of this book right now, so I only lightly skimmed tfa, but my copy is about Marie Quinn, not as Diehl says, Marion Wheeler. I do recall that name from an older, less cohesive 2020 ebook version that I had started reading years ago but set aside. Are there different protagonists in different markets? Or different perceived realities?
Good timing, the Kindle version is $1.99 right now.
I think the dynamic pricing algo is on to us - I see $13.99 at Amazon and clicked on a Google Play Books link for $1.99 that then became $13.99 magically, same for Apple Books.
Please don't 'buy' digital items from Amazon, because you won't actually own them. Pay extra, support your local bookshop and get a physical copy which you will actually own.
I really appreciate that sentiment, but on the other hand 98% of the books I buy I won’t read a second time (because reading a new book will almost always trump rereading an old one), so I’m actually fine with not owning most of them, especially at $1.99 prices. The few that I deeply care about I buy a physical copy of.
This disregards the benefit of a single device that is easy to carry. Love where this is come from so maybe do both if you can.
It's a trade-off. I love the convenience of ebooks, but not owning my books is just categorically unacceptable to me. I want my daughter and anyone else coming after me to have free access to them, not to have to jump through Amazon's hoops (if such hoops even exist) for access.<p>I have a Kobo that I use to read the non-DRM ebooks I'm able to acquire. One such source is downloads from the Kobo store, when publishers make the non-DRM file available.
I use a kindle but I have never bought a book on the kindle store ever (been using it for 10 years). Totally doable and not hard to avoid... especially since the smaller stores not only have better sales but the author typically gets more money too.
I borrowed it from the library.<p>Support your local library!
I basically always start with digital, if the book is good I always buy a physical copy for my shelf.
Amazon allows EPUB downloads for publishers that have chosen to go DRM-free.
They used to allow downloads of <i>all</i> books, which you could then rip the DRM from, but they got rid of that last year. Huge disappointment, and is why I don't buy books on Kindle anymore.
First I'm hearing of that, is there an easy way to tell that's available?
It usually says somewhere in the description I think. E.g. this one (good series, btw): <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shattering-Peace-Old-Mans-Book-ebook/dp/B0DQJ643QT" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Shattering-Peace-Old-Mans-Book-ebook/...</a><p>> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.<p>Not sure how universal that is, but I've seen similar language on several other books.
I'm more interested in rewarding utility because that gives me better things.
Are there any real-life examples of antimemes? How would antimemes even propagate given that they'd "die out" immediately?
I spent a fair amount of time thinking about this and the character of antimemes. Even ended up writing a whole taxonomy and mathematical framework for it.<p>In general a meme is specific to an entity-pair, with self-censoring information as a subset of antimeme that makes the information itself remove itself from the mind that learns it. In general though, information that is an antimeme is not the same thing as a category of information that <i>describes</i> an antimeme.<p>So, "your parents weird sextape" is generally antimemetic, you are unlikely to share that information yourself and I would not expect to see many examples where someone posted this. Your password is also antimemetic in most cases.<p>That said, information may contain both antimemetic and memetic components, such as "the game" (I just lost). The rules inherently are antimemetic and self-censoring, however the memetic component ensures this is still transmitted effectively to as many people as possible. A more entity-pair specific meme-antimeme relation is "where the good drug dealers hang out", which is information that is highly memetic or antimemetic under different conditions.<p>I think the key isn't to think of these things as strict categories, but labels we ascribe to a more continuous measure of memeablity.
There is a genre of music that my old roommate was into which titled all of their songs and albums in obscure Unicode characters with no known pronunciation. Songs in this genre may not be perfect antimemes, but I think their resistance to reference is an antimemetic property.<p>Also, chromosomes are nucleotide-encoded memes, and linear ones use teleomeres to impose limits on the number of replications they support, so that's another imperfect antimeme.<p>I know of no antimemes whose antiemetic nature comes from their ability to interfere with the human mind, but then again, I wouldn't know about them if they existed, which is more or less the book's point.
A malicious antimeme would be a dark pattern in web design for handling privacy/data/etc. Something designed to satisfy whatever law/regulation requires them to have the option while making the ability to find/remember/interact with it as hard as possible.<p>Another candidate is the common usage of memory-holing, where important information is removed from public perception maliciously. The Dubai Chocolate thing technically falls into here, as does the whole "war in Iran to distract from the Epstein files" thing. Frankly the whole Epstein stuff is riddled with malicious memes and antimemes to deliberately muddy the waters. Similar to deliberate attempts to inject insane conspiracy beliefs "the moon controls our brains" into conspiracy theories that are too close to something real "mk-ultra".<p>Consciousness for an antimeme is more of a classification error in my mind, as consciousness as a concept is permanently warped. But you could describe a secret society/dark family secret as a form of living antimeme, hiding some information and preventing it from being shared using a variety of means.
Maybe not exactly an antimeme, but my mind went to biology. Measles can destroy memory B-cells and T-cells, causing immunological amnesia.<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002885" rel="nofollow">https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002885</a>
If they did, we wouldn't know. Those that do/did know would be dead.
It’s a fun book. Definitely worth a read.
Nice review; covers all the best points of the book, and its place in the world, without too many spoilers.
It was a great book, but this review of it have its own value.
Crazy timing. My copy of this is being delivered today from the local bookshop. Great review.
TBH, the ending of Ra was a big letdown for me and though I like the small stories, I have the feeling that the author has issue building larger arcs. Still curious about this one and might read it just for the premise.
Couldn't finish it. I suppose it was not for me.
It was a fun read but I don’t understand the cult following this book has.
Loved this book. Definitely a mind trip
I listened to the Audible version and either I read a completely different book or the anti-memetic effects are real, because the main character in the article has a different name and the plot synopsis doesn’t seem to match up.<p>My short review would be: the book is very one-note, it’s like a horror movie that keeps doing the same jumpscare over and over again. Despite this I managed to enjoy it.
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Written by AI.
I read this.<p>It's got some provocative ideas, which Stephen foregrounds.<p>It's got a great hook, and like most writing incubated under circumstances like this, it leans hard into polished sharp introduction into a well-considered world with a very specific flavor.<p>It's also—no better way to put it—crappy as a novel.<p>It's not because the author can't string sentences together.<p>It's because that's not what makes a novel function as a novel.<p>Epic opening and premise establishment: 10/10<p>Nice "plot twist", predictable in its inevitability if not its specifics; conforms to genre: 7/10<p>Narrative arc: 2/10<p>Ability to sustain meaningful tension and interest while working through the de rigeur mechanics of filling hundreds of pages: 1/10<p>I get that there is a new readership with different expectations and styles of reading. (Looking at you tiktok; looking at you Dungeon Crawler Carl; looking at most successful YA fiction especially that which gets SPICEY and is released in 8-book series with a new volume every 11 months)<p>If you're silverback and relish long-form fiction as previously conceived: set expectations accordingly.
I have not read this book. I've been avoiding it for a while for the dumbest possible reason, which is that I <i>only</i> associate this book with SWE's.
Researcher here, if you like antimemes as a concept then this is a nice treatment that introduces people to what it means and how one needs to think around them in order to function.<p>It's a bit off kilter but well worth it
It's worth a read, at least the first half, just because it's really fun.
The book was good but I struggled to finish it. You as a reader are encouraged to read because the ideas are so good but then it becomes hard to endure through to whatever resolution was waiting. For those unfamiliar, it will feel something like Momento - you start to feel yourself changing as you work through it. Worth a go for anyone looking for something different.