There Is No Antimemetics Division: A Novel
4.4 | 8,401 ratings
Price: 13.99
Last update: 04-07-2026
Product details
- ASIN : B0DSJ2LW2Z
- Publisher : Ballantine Books
- Accessibility :
- Publication date : November 11, 2025
- Language : English
- File size : 9.4 MB
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 267 pages
- ISBN-13 : 978-0593983768
- Page Flip : Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank:#37 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Cosmic & Eldritch Horror (Kindle Store)
- Technothrillers (Books)
- Cosmic & Eldritch Horror (Books)
- Customer Reviews:4.44.4 out of 5 stars(8,396)
Top reviews from the United States
- Scott SlemmonsIntricate Plotline and Intense TerrorWelcome to the Unknown Organization, a beyond-top-secret international semi-governmental agency tasked with tracking down bizarre extranormal threats and phenomena, cataloguing them, and confining them so they can no longer harm humanity. They have facilities all over the world, and divisions covering biological and chemical threats, religious threats, alien threats, and threats you can barely even imagine. The dangers they uncover get extensive classifications, including a unique UO designation.
In this book, we're looking at the Antimemetics Division. An antimeme is a real thing -- it's something that's easy to forget or hard to remember or memorize. It's why good passwords are so difficult to remember, and why dreams are so easy to forget. But within the Unknown Organization, an antimeme can be a drug administered to cause localized amnesia, a special camouflage that makes something hard to see or remember, or an entity that eats memories. The Antimemetics Division is doused in so many memory-erasing phenomena, high-ranking members of the Foundation have to take special drugs just so they'll remember the division exists. Sometimes, division personnel forget important safety and security protocols.
And sometimes, you have to forget what the real threats even are, because just knowing them makes you -- and the world -- a target for annihilation.
Our lead character for most of this book is Marie Quinn, the no-nonsense head of the Antimemetics Division. She's worked in Antimemetics for decades, knows the ins and outs of amnestic drugs, designed to make you forget, and mnestic drugs, which strengthen your memory, and has faced numerous strange entities who specialize in hiding themselves from memory or in stripping memories and identity away. Marie has lost memories to monsters, and she's also helped stop monsters. She's saved thousands of lives.
But there's nothing out there like the thing classified as U-3125. Not really a living thing or an entity -- it's a universal idea that hates to be perceived or remembered. If you become aware of its existence, even if you just speculate on the possibility of its existence, it seeks you out, it wipes your mind away, it destroys everyone who knows you. Officially, no one at the Antimemetics Division is aware of it -- but there are secret, memory-locked rooms where U-3125 can't see, where desperate, hopeless plans are sought to get rid of it. But your memory must be wiped whenever you emerge from those secret rooms to keep U-3125 from flattening the brains of everyone in the division.
Is there any hope for humanity when no one is allowed to be aware of the species-ending threat? Or are we doomed to getting our minds crushed out of existence by the most terrifying horror in the universe?
When it comes to plots, qntm's work is intricate and unpredictable, so it's hard to reveal too much without cracking the story's foundation. But let's say this: I've read plenty of cosmic horror stories from lots of different authors, and I've never encountered cosmic horror as perfectly terrifying and hopeless and cruel and nihilistic as U-3125. If you're not into cosmic horror, this may end up putting cracks in your soul. If you are into cosmic horror, you may love it, and you may hate it, and it may end up putting cracks in your soul anyway.
We get some excellent characters mixed in here. There's Marie Quinn, obviously, the head of the Antimemetics Division, extremely intelligent and competent, and still terrified about how badly the odds are stacked against her. There's Adam Quinn, Marie's civilian husband, a talented musician, and a man who seems to be naturally resistant to antimemes. There's Simon Lee, a guy who's having a very rough first day on the job, especially because it isn't his first day on the job. There's Dr. Oli Morgan, a new researcher with a lot of promise for a future in the organization who has the misfortune of thinking about the worst thing possible at the wrong time. There's Ed Hix, one of the division's great engineers and thinkers, who gets put in charge of the division's greatest, most ambitious projects, with nearly no backup or assistance.
The settings are also a lot of fun, ranging from fussy foundation board rooms and offices to a tropical island inhabited by gigantic animals that cannot be perceived or remembered to a community concert hall filled with people who've suddenly become part of a malevolent cosmic memeplex. The Unknown Organization is a weird, weird place, and it needs weird, weird places inside it.
If you love science fiction, monstrously terrifying cosmic horror, and deep, complex plots that don't lead you where you expected to go, this is something you're going to want to read. - Matthew RGreat original story/characters set in a pre-existing worldI was searching for new horror (specifically Cosmic Horror or Psychological) to read and came across this book in my recommendations.
Before reading this book it should be understood that the entire world/setting is based on the SCP Foundation which is a universe created by a group of anonymous contributors/writers on the internet. There are other reviews here that go into extensive detail on what the SCP Foundation is so there's no need to rehash it in this review. If you haven't been exposed to the SCP world I highly suggest typing SCP Foundation into Google and delving through that massive wiki rabbit hole.
If you've never read anything SCP-related before, then there may be places where you will have to stop to look up an in-universe word. The author on their webpage explains that most of the book is original content of their own creation that happens to take place in the SCP world. Despite this, there are a few ideas, SCPs, and items that are obviously SCP Foundation related, but no explanation is ever given.
OVERALL:
The early and mid chapters are amazing and the characters are interesting to follow. There are some cool scenes and glimpses into other characters or occurrences that have great visuals that are truly horrifying. Some of the scenes that seem to not make sense at the moment are later revisited from another point-of-view or at another time to provide understanding. There is a sense of grandeur mixed with the unknown and the unknowable and it all comes together to be a fun ride that almost nails the ending but falls a bit short due to a few different issues. Ultimately I think this project works really well as entries on the SCP Foundation Wiki but it falls a bit short of what I would expect from a published book.
WHAT I LIKED:
- Interesting characters that feel human because despite their badass actions, they can still fail or break
- Amazing world that is full of interesting creatures, people, and mystery/horror
- Scenes that actually feel horrific or tense without making it feel too predictable or cliche. These characters are mostly competent agents or brilliant scientists who are encountering entities far beyond their own understanding.
- The monsters in this book are horrifying and fun to see in action
- A relationship that felt fairly genuine between two people. I cared about their feelings towards one another and their interactions.
- The unique thinking or actions that needed to be taken by characters in order to combat something (or an idea) that couldn't be known without harming the knower
- The author used some great imagery for multiple parts of the story that helped greatly with the scene. There were a few passages where after I read them I thought: "That is probably the best way to describe that really odd creature where I can not only picture it, but also FEEL it in the room with me as well."
- The grandeur and massive scale of some of the imagery gives the reader that weird itch in their brain when it has to think of something that shouldn't be possible
WHAT I DID NOT LIKE:
- This book suffers from the same issues that nearly every cosmic horror book has; There is not a simple way to explain with human words a thing that is unknowable to humans or so abstract that human language can't describe it. It's like explaining a new color that doesn't exist yet or a sound you can't hear. The words don't exist for it so the author has to get creative or use a lot of abstract ideas/words to attempt to get the point across. There were a few times in this book where I either had no idea what the author was trying to convey or I had to accept the words on the page and come up with my best guess for an idea or action that takes place in either a thought or location that can't exist. Even here, trying to describe it to you is nearly impossible.
- There are a few instances where the chronological flow of the book is shuffled around and the scenes that are out of order aren't given explanations or connections to help the reader figure out what is happening or when. I can't explain it further without spoilers but the book could have benefited from either markers or some sort of wording to denote when/where we are.
- There are parts of the book that felt like filler to try and help a reader get a grasp on what an anti-meme and meme were as they pertained to the in-universe setting. Ultimately these scenes felt wasted because to me they didn't add anything to the characters I wanted to follow. There are pieces of the book where I have completely forgotten what happened in that chapter because it felt like filler and I didn't care about that scene. I wanted more Wheeler and we get less than I'd like. It's one of the downsides of the SCP world; The SCPs can carry the story by themselves because people read them to be fascinated or enthralled by SCP entry. But most stories require a character to follow and experience the world through. Without that character anchor, you may as well just be describing a setting where people are milling about.
- Some of the prose in this book dipped a toe in the pool of sounding smart for the sake of trying to come off as a smart writer. It's hard to explain, it's not really purple prose, but a few passages felt a little pretentious where I just had to roll my eyes and mentally make a note that the author could have sounded more natural with different words.
- The ending comes abruptly and the explanation is weak and very hand-wavey/deus-ex-machina. As I mentioned above, I think it's about 40% the failing of the author and 60% the failing of how hard it is to write about something so abstract or unknowable using words and human experience that can't touch that abstract.
- In a typical book the reader has to have some sort of character anchor in order to experience the world from their POV. This book jumps between following a few different characters and it feels like the world, the crisis, and the creatures carry most of the book. I think I would have loved this book more if it had followed Marion Wheeler as a main character and cut out the fluff. - PNWAdventurerGreat book - abstract, thoughtful, fresh and perfect if you loved the game ControlWow - if you loved the video game Control you'll get this book because it is right in that wheelhouse. The reverse is also true: if you enjoy this book, go play Control. It's intentionally abstract and confounding, which honestly makes it wonderful. I just wish it was longer, I didn't want it to end. Narration is subdued, but suits the book's narrative perfectly.