There is No Antimemetics Division

 
There is No Antimemetics Division

by qntm

self-published

2021

 

 

Like The Fifth Science, which I read last year, There is No Antimemetics Division is another book that the Amazon algorithm is relentlessly convinced it should offer me at every opportunity. Fortunately, the public library bought a copy of this one too!

 
So, 'meme' is a real concept. It refers to the cultural equivalent of a gene, an idea that 'reproduces' because people share it with other people. 'Antimeme' is a made-up concept that refers to ideas that are supernaturally self-censoring - mostly things that are invisible because you look past them instead of at them without realizing it (like the 'somebody else's problem' field from The Hitchhiker's Guide) and things you can't remember when you're not currently interacting with them (like The Silence from Dr Who or the main character from Larry Niven's The Gift from Earth.)
 

There is No Antimemetics Division is based on the fake encyclopedia entries and lore of the SCP Foundation website, and may have originally been published in its entirety there. In this fiction, The Foundation is a secret organization that protects the world from dangerous supernatural anomalies. The Antimemetics Division is responsible for protecting us from any threats that either attack or camouflage themselves with antimemes.

 
The plot here is a kind of scifi spy thriller that roughly follows Marion Wheeler, the head of Antimemetics as she and her staff handle a few routine threats (only sometimes successfully) and repeatedly rediscover a big world-ending threat. 

 
The problem is, the world-ender, #3125 in their database, is approaching human idea space from outside reality. When it gets here, it will take over every human mind by becoming the only thought anyone is capable of thinking (like anti-life in DCeased), but while it's still only arriving, it kills anyone who becomes consciously aware of it. So to fight it, you need an antimeme-shielded workspace to develop a solution, ways to convince yourself to go back to the safe space repeatedly to keep working, and ways to keep yourself from asking questions or getting ideas that will kill you when you're not shielded.

 
Marion figures the situation out, thinks she and her team might have already created the solution, and gets to the secure bunker just in time to avert doomsday ... except it turns out that they didn't have a solution, just a powerful antimeme bomb to temporarily stop the killing by making everyone forget what they've learned about the alien idea so far.

 
Then, we pick up following Marion's husband Adam. (Due to a workplace accident prior to the novel's start, they'd both forgotten the other existed.) He witnesses the arrival of the alien idea and the subsequent end of the world. Then, the Idea of Marion, who has become a meme herself, saves him from endlessly thinking the same alien thought and turns him back into himself. 

 
Adam then sets out to save the world by locating the other site where the solution might already exist. Unfortunately, the solution is incomplete, but the idea of Marion Wheeler meme is able to act as the missing piece. The alien idea is defeated, and people can think again, with, of course, no memory of anything that's happened, and indeed no memory that anything has happened at all.

 
This is scifi for scifi nerds, probably not really intended for general audiences. Being an SCP fan might help, but I'm not, and I was fine. The writing is brisk and the plot is engaging. I think there could have been a bit more dramatic unity. Some things happen seemingly just to show off the possibilities of antimemetics that could have been made more central to the plot, and we get a few too many single-use characters when it might've been nice to combine them into a few recurring characters instead. But I had fun reading it, and especially if you're a fan of what I like to call Sapir-Whorf scifi, where ideas have supernatural power, you might like to consider it.