There is No Antimemetics Division
TLDR: “Promising but confusing”
An antimemetic is an idea that resists spreading. I read an entire book about this last year. But that was about real antimemtics. This is about monsters.
This book was an outgrowth of the SCP Wiki which is a community-edited wiki that represents a fake world of monsters and aliens and such that have to be contained.
The idea is that there are ideas that are so dangerous that they’re effectively monsters – they could actually kill you. They’re called “Unknowns,” and they’re numbered. They actively prevent themselves from spreading – they force you to forget about them once you’ve encountered them, and they erase any evidence of their existence. If you meet with one, you will forget everything that happens. If you encounter them again, you need to hope there’s some written record of what happened that you can refer to.
People working in the Antimemetics Division take “mnestics,” which are drugs to help them remember. They’re effective, but they damage the body over time.
The book starts with the main character being called into her bosses office, and him demanding to know who she is and what she does. Turns out his memory of her and her role was stolen by…something. She has to explain to him all over again why she exists and what she does.
Then a co-worker is “attacked” in the company cafeteria by a coworker that’s really a disguised Unknown. There are people all around him, but the Unknown has him in a “field” that causes everyone to forget everything they see. He manages to find a written record that has been extended by everyone that this Unknown has killed explaining what they tried to do to survive, and encouraging them to extend the record before they get killed so that perhaps someone down the line can survive it.
The whole thing was confusing, and I admit to not totally understand what was going on most of the time (especially towards the end). But I loved the premise. It was unique and interesting, and some of the individual scenes were horrifying in a new and unique way, even if I didn’t quite get it all.
It was very Lovecraftian. It depended on things unseen but felt. There’s was this kind of “scary thing lurking in the background vibe to it).
I read this at the same time as The Gentle Romance. The understand them both about the same, but I disliked this one less because is exposed me to an interesting idea that I understood enough to appreciate.
Book Info
- Author
- qntm
- Year
- Pages
- 288
- Acquired
- I have read this book. According to my records, I completed it on .
- I own an electronic copy of this book.