There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
How do you explain how mind bending a book is when you are not even sure how it ended or what it is conceptualizing?
The core idea here is: how do you fight an entity you cannot perceive or even know exists; as the moment you know it exists you are compromised?
This is one of the most engaging, cosmically horrific, and yet wildly creative scientific engagements I’ve ever encountered. It’s so much more than just a book or story. It’s an idea, a commentary on the world that could only be understood if you lived in our world today. A world with the internet, socials, memes, viral knowledge, misinformation, paranoia post pandemic, and terror of terrorism in your own backyard. I believe if read in 1992 this book would be nonsense and couldn’t evoke the same horror it does today as the ideas would be too abstract. While today they are difficult and make your brain really think, the idea is tangible enough and one that makes the reader question everything around them including the oxygen they are breathing.
I may never ever NOT wonder about white worms wriggling in my overall existence or shadowy figures or spider-like entities or or or. These ideas and antimemes, if you will, are going to stay with me forever. The way that ‘he was a ghost the whole time’ has since I saw The Sixth Sense in high school (when it was first released).
It’s the kind of story that just makes you pause at moments and question everything around you. While reading it I started having ideas for stories I could write that explain away other phenom in our world based on the idea of an antimeme existing. It had me wondering things like, maybe that Déjà vu moment isn’t a glitch in the Matrix, but a mnestic drug side effect (once you’ve read this you will understand what I mean)!
The most surprising part of this novel is the love story embedded at its core. I am surprised no one really talks about the woven in ideal of love being one thing that really sets humans apart. Arguably, what is humanity without love and how powerful can it be… If you forget all the cosmically horrific ideas here and only come to understand the Quinn’s relationship (or non-relationship) then it begs the question: what kind of love does it take to save the world? And yet, it didn’t have to be this particular path that gets us to the end, but I do think it is interesting the author chose the path he did. A lot more should be said about the love story than seems to have been said to date, in my opinion.
I truly believe this is the kind of book and idea that will live on long after its initial readers, author, and fandom has gone. There Is No Antimemetics Division asks you to conceptualize that everything you know is not at all the way you know it. And it does it in such a way that once you start to wonder or get it you are trapped in its horror and unable to escape.
A warning: this is also the kind of book that if you don’t ’get it’ or aren’t pulled in by the idea then you will hate it. I can absolutely see why some detest it. I believe you must go in with an open mind, and ready to really process a reframing of our world. If not you may think it’s ridiculous, stupid, or too complicated. I would recommend going in with only the knowledge that this book is going to ask you to change the way you think about reality, the way the Matrix, Interstellar, Dark Matter, and Piranesi do. If you are not ready to work for the knowledge in this mere 275 page book then you will get nothing out of it. But if you give it your attention and really allow the ideas to expand your mind then I believe you can walk away different.
I read many, many passages twice and in just the last hour of thinking about it have re-read the epilogue three times. This is a book that will occupy my brain for a long time to come (I think) and may very well be the best science fiction book I’ve ever read. I couldn’t have imagined anything hitting like Childhood’s End did when I was 13 yrs old; but this may very well have done it. The kind of book that once you’ve read it you can’t remember what it was like to not read it. (An irony that tickles me given the ideas presented in the narrative!)
If this review feels a bit contradictory, mysterious, or otherwise like you’re missing something that is because without reading the story my little nods likely mean nothing. But once you’ve read the book, come back here and let me know if reading it changed your take on what I’m saying. I’d love to know if I gave just enough to tickle someone’s brain into wanting to read it, while still being too specific. Don’t go looking for spoilers, but don’t worry too much either. It would be hard to understand a spoiler without experiencing the novel itself.
This is a book that is an experience as much as a story. See where your mind goes when asked to think about the impossible, that which cannot be perceived, and then think about how you fight it to save everything, when you don’t remember, or even know, it exists. And then ask yourself how different the world could really be after you read this. Then read it. And come let me know if you’re a hater, or you too had your mind expanded (like me, and so many others) who cannot remember what it was like before we had the antimemes knowledge in our brains.
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My rating: 5 of 5 stars
How do you explain how mind bending a book is when you are not even sure how it ended or what it is conceptualizing?
The core idea here is: how do you fight an entity you cannot perceive or even know exists; as the moment you know it exists you are compromised?
This is one of the most engaging, cosmically horrific, and yet wildly creative scientific engagements I’ve ever encountered. It’s so much more than just a book or story. It’s an idea, a commentary on the world that could only be understood if you lived in our world today. A world with the internet, socials, memes, viral knowledge, misinformation, paranoia post pandemic, and terror of terrorism in your own backyard. I believe if read in 1992 this book would be nonsense and couldn’t evoke the same horror it does today as the ideas would be too abstract. While today they are difficult and make your brain really think, the idea is tangible enough and one that makes the reader question everything around them including the oxygen they are breathing.
I may never ever NOT wonder about white worms wriggling in my overall existence or shadowy figures or spider-like entities or or or. These ideas and antimemes, if you will, are going to stay with me forever. The way that ‘he was a ghost the whole time’ has since I saw The Sixth Sense in high school (when it was first released).
It’s the kind of story that just makes you pause at moments and question everything around you. While reading it I started having ideas for stories I could write that explain away other phenom in our world based on the idea of an antimeme existing. It had me wondering things like, maybe that Déjà vu moment isn’t a glitch in the Matrix, but a mnestic drug side effect (once you’ve read this you will understand what I mean)!
The most surprising part of this novel is the love story embedded at its core. I am surprised no one really talks about the woven in ideal of love being one thing that really sets humans apart. Arguably, what is humanity without love and how powerful can it be… If you forget all the cosmically horrific ideas here and only come to understand the Quinn’s relationship (or non-relationship) then it begs the question: what kind of love does it take to save the world? And yet, it didn’t have to be this particular path that gets us to the end, but I do think it is interesting the author chose the path he did. A lot more should be said about the love story than seems to have been said to date, in my opinion.
I truly believe this is the kind of book and idea that will live on long after its initial readers, author, and fandom has gone. There Is No Antimemetics Division asks you to conceptualize that everything you know is not at all the way you know it. And it does it in such a way that once you start to wonder or get it you are trapped in its horror and unable to escape.
A warning: this is also the kind of book that if you don’t ’get it’ or aren’t pulled in by the idea then you will hate it. I can absolutely see why some detest it. I believe you must go in with an open mind, and ready to really process a reframing of our world. If not you may think it’s ridiculous, stupid, or too complicated. I would recommend going in with only the knowledge that this book is going to ask you to change the way you think about reality, the way the Matrix, Interstellar, Dark Matter, and Piranesi do. If you are not ready to work for the knowledge in this mere 275 page book then you will get nothing out of it. But if you give it your attention and really allow the ideas to expand your mind then I believe you can walk away different.
I read many, many passages twice and in just the last hour of thinking about it have re-read the epilogue three times. This is a book that will occupy my brain for a long time to come (I think) and may very well be the best science fiction book I’ve ever read. I couldn’t have imagined anything hitting like Childhood’s End did when I was 13 yrs old; but this may very well have done it. The kind of book that once you’ve read it you can’t remember what it was like to not read it. (An irony that tickles me given the ideas presented in the narrative!)
If this review feels a bit contradictory, mysterious, or otherwise like you’re missing something that is because without reading the story my little nods likely mean nothing. But once you’ve read the book, come back here and let me know if reading it changed your take on what I’m saying. I’d love to know if I gave just enough to tickle someone’s brain into wanting to read it, while still being too specific. Don’t go looking for spoilers, but don’t worry too much either. It would be hard to understand a spoiler without experiencing the novel itself.
This is a book that is an experience as much as a story. See where your mind goes when asked to think about the impossible, that which cannot be perceived, and then think about how you fight it to save everything, when you don’t remember, or even know, it exists. And then ask yourself how different the world could really be after you read this. Then read it. And come let me know if you’re a hater, or you too had your mind expanded (like me, and so many others) who cannot remember what it was like before we had the antimemes knowledge in our brains.
Follow me on Goodreads
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