I wanted to like this more than I actually ended up liking it. I would say, if you’re a HUGE SCP fan, and you’re the type of person who loves the lore of the foundation, you’ll really love this. That’s not really my favorite part about it. I am in for the creepiness, and some of that stuff is really in here, but not enough for me.

An entirely novel novel that introduces an impossible possibility. Antimemes are unthinkable thoughts – ideas that erase themselves.

Imagine a global crisis that no one can remember is going on, it is happening everywhere, all the time. Preventing annihilation is a protagonist that can’t quite remember what is happening, except by the absence of what should be.

Rather than reading like a philosophy tract the author weaves complex ideas seamlessly into the plot. The characters are human, the stakes are end of the world, and it will keep you interested until the end.

4/5

ARC provided; opinions are my own.

In a world where the monsters under the bed have teeth and world-altering effects, the Antimemetics Division devotes itself to the scientific classification, containment, and art of securing protection for the unknowing masses. Whether they're cataloging forgotten totems of civilization long gone, impossible mega-fauna, or facing down the end of reality, ten times over, Antimemetics is on the task in a series of events that center quantum entanglement amidst the tragically, and frighteningly, mundane horror of our current reality meeting otherworldly apex predators that warp our understanding of what it means to be human in a world built for the monsters we create, not the monster who break down our doors.

At once heart-wrenching, at once morbidly curious, all parts hopeful even in the face of a yawning eternity cast in ruby red, There is No Antimemetics Division stands as both portal and path to a strong voice in Weird Fiction, ushering in a complex narrative that demonstrates qntm's mental acuity as both author and storyteller, leaving readers to wonder if this is the true universe, or a remnant of a war we'll never remember.

A secret organization combats entities that cannot be remembered.

I read the self-published version of this last year and was very impressed by the concept, even though I thought the execution was a little rough. The revised edition smooths things out and expands parts to add depth to characters and clarity to the story, which is helpful when you're trying to wrap your head around things like asynchronous research and physical manifestations of ideas!

I'd recommend <i>There Is No Antimemetics Division</i> to sci-fi and horror fans who like having their concept of reality messed with.

Four and a half stars.

Rating 3.5

Quick very high level summary.
Marion Wheeler is the head of the SCP Foundation's Antimemetics Division. Antimemes are self-censoring ideas that make people forget their existence, becoming living ghosts. Marion is on a mission to fight against the entities that erase memories and distort reality. As her and her team deep dive Antimemes they have battle to maintain their own memories.

My Take
How do I explain this novel without revealing too much? For being less then 300 pages there is a lot packed into it’s small package. The central concept of the novel focuses on what is called Antimemes and it is fascinating. The idea of self-censoring properties is insanely imaginative yet extremely unsettling at the same time. The descriptions of antimemetic materializations are amazingly vivid moments of terrifying existential horror. Jarring at times and even triggering anxieties and fears that rise from fundamental questions about human existence and ones perception of reality. Now there are moments when things are left a bit abstract and the reader is left with their own interpretations but is that intentional or an accepted accident on the part of the author? Who knows, either way it did not impede my enjoyment of the story in any way. In fact it just left me more pensive. This small book made me question, think, chuckle and at times cringe, what it needed more of was emotion. The characters felt stiff and lacked depth. Overall I enjoyed the read, the horror was written well and the concept behind the book was fascinating.

I thoroughly enjoyed There is No Antimemetics Division. I would now read anything by qntm, but would also like more in this world. Will recommend for library purchase and readers advisory.

I couldn't stop reading. This has the level of invention of a Simon R. Green urban fantasy and is very fast-paced. Picture The Matrix crossed with Inception filtered into the Doctor Who plot arc about the Silence. Very enjoyable (and good title).

I need to find more media like this immediately! I loved the concept and plot for the most part, would have liked a bit more character work since Wheeler and Quinn's relationship is such a big part of the ending. 3125 was sufficiently terrifying for me, the cosmic horror aspect made me want to crawl out of my skin when he was alone with it all! Even though I didn't understand much of the resolution, I really enjoyed the writing style.

Memes are ideas that spread. Therefore, memetic warfare. But what about ideas that not only won't spread? Or ideas that remove instead of add? Now you have antimemetics warfare. But if you can't remember it, does it exist? Therefore there is a memetic division, but there is no antimemetic division. Or is there?

I was drawn to this book by the cover design, title, and premise, but I certainly did not expect to be so completely enthralled by it! The story is engrossing and at times legitimately terrifying (and I do not get scared by books easily). This book scratched the part of my brain that loves Jeff VanderMeer’s ambiguous, existential horror and enjoys shows like Severance and the X-Files. The fact that this story originated as part of the SCP Foundation, an online collaborative writing project started in 2008 (which I only learned about while researching this book and author), has sent me down a fun, and kind of disturbing, fiction rabbit hole. There Is No Antimemetics Division may not be for everyone, but if you’re open to some weird, conceptual horror that will make you question the reliability of your own memory, this is an excellent read.

There is so much that humans don't see-- can't, in most cases. Not unless you're drugged to the gills with specialized chemicals that will let you. Marie Quinn is not only an agent of an organization that deals with these creatures, but she runs it. The world starts falling apart from a creature that will kill you if you know about it, and it's down to her and a plan she can't even remember. It's not her first rodeo, but it is her first day.

I read the original version of this book back in 2021, and to this day, it remains one of my favorite books of all times. qntm invokes in the reader almost a sense of time travel as the characters forget and reforge memories, bring up old incidents and have to navigate the danger with not just a blindfold, but going backwards and being told they're somewhere else. There Is No Antimemetics Division brings you on a nail-biting journey through a hell world you think at every turn can't get worse (and then it does). But in the same vein of 'I Have No Mouth and Must Scream', this book is a tragedy that defines hope at its core. Humanity, and everything that makes us us, will live on, even in the worst of circumstances. Even if the entire world is turned to weird flesh glob monsters and all we have left is -checks notes- a principle violinist. Joking aside, this book holds strong through three, four, five, however many rereads one does, and every time there's some other subtle piece of story or dialogue or clue about what's happened, or what's going to happen. This book is an incredible work of art, please read it.

Thanks NetGalley for the arc. This was quite the adventure and one that I felt I had a hard time comprehending by no fault to the author. This creative, mind bending novel was a lot to digest but the parts I did follow were phenomenal. What really drew me in and kept me reading was the ramifications of secret government organizations and their connection to memories and their abilities to alter one’s identity and reality. I would love to reread this one.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

There Is No Antimemetics Division is a published version of online SCP articles that the author wrote, with the references to SCP removed (for obvious reasons). I have been aware of SCP, but I tend to be a chicken so never really dived in, which means this was all new information to me so that's the perspective I'm coming from. The republishing of fanfic has been a hot button topic in the book space recently, I don't feel that this qualifies as fanfic because the SCP wiki is a collaborative writing project & the content within this book appears to all have been created by this author under their username, qntm.

This book is both spooky and heartwarming - a tale of defiant hope, of the struggle of restarting from square one over & over again, of the power of learning & building upon what came before. This feels incredibly relevant for the current political climate in the US.

There Is No Antimemetics Division follows Marie Quinn, head of the Antimemetics Division, as she faces creatures capable of making you forget you ever saw them - or uses amnestic drugs to make herself forget for the safety of the entire world. Though, naturally, forgetting whole chunks of time makes her suspicious and leads her back down the rabbit hole time & again. It starts off feeling like a series of separate stories to explore the different antimemes, and builds into a desperate, existential struggle.

This is the style of horror that I find I prefer - creeping dread, dawning realizations, struggle against overwhelming odds, unreal creatures and (mostly) skipping the gratuitous gore of what I usually associate with horror (to be clear - there is some gore. just not the gratuitous kind in my personal opinion). I really, really enjoyed this. My only criticism is that I wish there were an index for some of the symbols used (at one point I was referring to something as "the squiggle" because it was its own symbol that I didn't recognize and it was embedded as a tiny image so I couldn't zoom in on it on my Kindle app to try and see it better or easily search it by highlighting it).

I wish I could take some amnestics and read it for the first time again.

A perfect short read for Creepypasta and SCP Foundation lovers. This was an extremely complex and confusing read, but that was the entire point. It is a deeply intricate and although you may think someone aspects don’t connect, by the end the story comes together in a beautiful collage of mind bending turns.

Each creature was vastly different from the next and it shows the complex creativity and thought that was put into this book. You are never able to guess what is going to occur next, what oddity will be introduced, or how the labyrinthine plot will resolve. That is what keeps you reading.

I originally heard of this through TikTok and was devastated to find out I couldn’t get it until it’s re-publishing in November. I genuinely screamed what I got the approval notification and I was not at all disappointed.

I will say this book is not for everyone, especially people who like a straightforward plot line and want to understand every single dynamic within the book that’s. But for individuals who truly love creativity, fantasy, weird girl literature, and a bit of horror this is the perfect book for you

Thank you netgalley for the arc.
I don't know what to say because I found the second half so confusing. My brain is not big enough for this.
I will say I did love the parts I do get. The idea of fighting something that you can't remember, and must both hide from yourself and also trust your future self to continue is especially horrifying for me. If the book stayed as a monster of the week type of book I would be happy. The beginning chapters where the characters find themselves alone, fighting a monster they can't remember or have any information on and will forget is so entertaining and novel I wish the author included more.
Once the story reached the back half with an overarching antagonist to defeat it became harder the comprehend what was going on. I still understand the broad strokes of the story, but the explanations given at the beginning made sense while as it went on I got more puzzled. The ending fell along those lines so I really do not know how to rate it, but for something out of my depth I am glad the broad strokes are still understandable.
4/5 i think?

A brain-bending, twisting exploration of the idea of self-keeping secrets, intrusive/compulsive thoughts and the people whose job it is to (unfortunately) know all about them. Marie Quinn leads the Antimemetics Division of an unnamed organization dedicated to understanding and protecting humanity from a variety of extraordinary threats. The threats Marie deals with are "antimemes," which are basically entities whose existence is kept secret by their very nature. Memory, identity, and how people perceive reality are all fair game for these things. If this sounds confusing, the book does a very good job of easing you into the idea with some horrifying examples of how this works in practice and the kinds of absolute nonsense that people have to go through to even partially understand these things. Then, of course, everything goes entirely, 100% bonkers and the train launches off the rails and the story begins in earnest.

An extremely satisfying, creative, original science fiction read that just keeps ramping up!

An incredibly creative sci-fi thriller taking the idea of a self-keeping secret and pushing it into corners where the only way out is through the mind. A shady organization is tasked with the nearly impossible and face foes of the unimaginable, having to problem solve again and again in order to protect mankind from something that exists all around us but is only harmful once we perceive it. I couldn't put it down and was sad when it ended.

I liked it. It was fun and pretty short. Each chapter feels like a different thing, and I know they are all suppose to be connected in someway but it doesn't always feel like it or at least obviously so. I hope the author keeps writing weird stuff because I'd read more of it.

Having heard about the collective storytelling of SCP but never having dived into it, I was curious to check out a novel both inspired by and born out of that online community. From the outside looking in, it was quite unsettling to have that endless dark void within stare back out at me.

There were some elements in the story that didn't work for me as a reader. I feel more could have been done to make me feel for some of the important interpersonal relationships in the book, especially early on with Adam and Marie. The interconnected short story framing worked well, but occasionally felt disjointed in unintentional ways. I didn't always follow the lines of logic to the same conclusions as the story did.

However, I'm fine with all of that. I appreciate that it is a speculative, surreal work of creativity where I'm not as invested in the characters as much as I am in the bizarre and and tense emotions I'm dipped into as I read it. It's rare to read a book where the stakes are so high that I cannot see the ceiling. I sped through it faster than other reads, desperately seeking answers and connections as I went. In the end I felt satisfied but also oddly bereft, both wanting more and not sure if I could survive another encounter.

The play on memory and the need to forget makes for a thrilling read. The Unknowns were so disturbing and odd that I would love to see how they could adapt a book like this into a film. I especially loved the sections that were largely redacted -- giving us a glimpse of things is far scarier than the whole.

(The only downside to the redacted bits in the e-ARC I received from Netgalley was that the text in several scenes of the latter half of the book still existed under the censor bars, making it possible for me to read all of the redacted material on the Kindle phone app if I set it to night mode. I did so out of curiosity, but wish I hadn't -- the mystery of it was far more exciting. Hopefully the publisher will fix it in the release version of the e-book.)

I am unsure of how to describe this without robbing you of the experience of reading it yourself. This story is one of the more unique sci-fi tales I have read, though it took me some time to wrap my head around it.

What seems at first a series of vaguely connected tales in the same universe eventually takes a more connected shape. The lore in this is incredible and haunting, the characters developed enough to serve as interesting vehicles for the story.

If things like the Backrooms appeal to you (or the already Antimemetics-connected SCP), I think this will be a hit for you. Best to go in blind on this one, I think.