I'd push back on the redaction point. One of the primary conceits of the book is that the information is generally 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?

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.

Things like the memory consuming entity, async research, etc I enjoyed.

Have you read free online version or 2025 edited/paid one from penguin books or what have you?

It's possible to enjoy amateurish fiction as well right? I think we are a bit spoiled by best sellers and high production movies, but of course those cater to the general public and will have Least Common Denominator themes like checks notes love and motifs like checks again good vs evil.

When there's a topic that is very niche our expectation for quality should go down, but it's not necessarily something to stomach, but something to appreciate, it allows us to see through the media and into the author a little bit, the way you would if you see a friend doing a low budget but profoundly intimate short.

Ra is great, and so is Fine Structure but they are both significantly longer than Antimemetics. Most people wouldn't read a massive novel publishing on some guy's personal website.

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

It's in the title: "There is no Antimemetics Division" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870256-there-is-no-ant...

I suppose this joke only works when you've read it. I should take my meds, else I'll forget.

What article?

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.

Did I lose chapters or is v1 horribly different? It was so psychologically defeating I was in a very weird malaise for a week.

I think it succumbed to Lost syndrome. Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the novel despite the issues. But it was definitely created in an episodic SCP way which means rising mystery and fewer and fewer answers. I think that, like Lost, the author worked themselves into a corner they didn't fully understand the way out of. The building mystery works because everyone wants to know what the fuck is going on. But the delayed payoff fails more and more often until the project collapses. There Is No Antimemetics Division isn't unique in this. It describes most Blake Crouch and Peter Clines novels. Lots of interesting mystery buildup with completely unsatisfactory conclusions to them.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

I will say this is tangential to the culture war, but seems to exist outside of it too.

I loved the Southern Reach trilogy but didn't finish TINAD. I thought the premise was pushed too far and that less would've been more. OTOH the atmosphere of oppressive bureaucracy of Authority is still one my all time favorite scifi reads.

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.

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 Ra and Fine Structure 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.)

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.

The rewrite is excellent

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.

The review is also heavily LLM-inflected, to the point of being distracting.

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.

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):

https://github.com/stephenturner/skill-deslop/blob/main/refe...

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).

Really didn't like this adaptation.

There's also a short web series which is very good: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3ywOKVBeAp1CmOhpsfu...

I haven't seen the short film, so cannot compare.

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.

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 read it in chunks from the wiki and feel the same. Maybe I'm not a discerning reader but it stayed in the front of my mind for a good few days after.

I bought it a few years ago before the new book deal and the name is Marion Wheeler.

I believe it was self published back then. Although it’s a beautiful hard cover that was only like $14 on amazon. I found it funny that it’s one of my favorite recent hardcovers and is cheaper and self published.

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 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.

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 describes an antimeme.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think this is a genuinely interesting question that the boom does not explore.

One possible antimemetic truth is "Most people are not good at what they care about".

Maybe not exactly an antimeme, but my mind went to biology. Measles can destroy memory B-cells and T-cells, causing immunological amnesia.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002885

Sure, disinformation narratives get seeded all the time to inoculate the population from any narrative that a vested interest determines is counter-agenda by rendering the narrative into an anti-meme.

• this person who suspects a research-related origin of covid is not a published, experienced virologist. Conclusion to draw: only virologists funded by research grants have credibility to sound-off publicly on covid origins. 'research-related covid origin' becomes an anti-meme.

• this person who asserted 'X' is an antisemite. (conclusion to draw: 'only people who accept 'not-X' are not antisemites' X becomes an anti-meme.

• this person who saw [unexplained craft in a sky / in a hangar] has Y derogatory items in their reputation. conclusion to draw: ;only people with derogatory reputations see UFOs' [unexplained craft] becomes an anti-meme.

Memes don't have valence every single example mentioned here are just memes with a small matnitude

If they did, we wouldn't know. Those that do/did know would be dead.

And very creepy too. I loved it.

Writing good endings is hard.

I liked Ra, but I liked Fine Structures more.

I am a "silverback" and have read all of the classics of the SciFi genre and I loved this novel. An unconventional topic like this isn't going to fit all of the norms of writing. I thought it was well written and I love his dialog. I'm looking forward to future work.

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.

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.