I just finished this book and complained about it the whole time. The prose is amateur and peppered with cliches (e.g. you should be fined for publishing the phrase "their suit was so sharp it could cut"). His attempt to write about the inner thoughts of the characters was pretty simple. The descriptions of violence and horror also felt child-like, especially the dialogue during those moments (e.g. Redd's introduction). The landscapes are bland, with lots of repetition. Personally, the redaction technique got boring fast when he would take up entire pages of the book to convey absent memories. He could use his words to convey this instead of black-boxes.
I will give the author credit on how they deal with their characters' memories and the re-development of their thoughts, and the usage of time-jumping was reasonable (some books jump around too much, as if these time-skips improve a boring plot). Also the convention for how they solve their dilemma was enjoyable.
Overall, I think the author relies too much on a vocal fandom around the SCP Foundation to glorify the book. I think there is potential for a saga of books but there needs to be more effort in the drafting and editing process to raise the quality of the books to the level the universe deserves.
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.
That was a good mindbender indeed. I'd add "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clarke and Steven Baxter. Beware of spoilers high up the wikipedia page [0]. Tells a good tale of unexpected externalities of disruptive technology introduction.
I love all these. I'd add Blightsight by Peter Watts to the list. It has the creepy, psychological bent of Annihilation combined with the hard science elements common to qntm's, Neal Stephenson's and Greg Egan's books.
I wanted to like this, as the premise was fascinating and the word-smithing was pretty good. But something about it left me feeling a little disappointed at the end. More so the end of the entire trilogy, than Annihilation by itself though, IIRC.
His book is great, but to be clear I feel like he writes exactly one book. I've read it in many forms and it's an amazing book. But don't be surprised when you realize that every book is just him trying to find a new way to look at the same object over and over again.
Very enjoyable but his short stories are great because they force him to focus on one idea instead of how his whole world view fits together.
Blindsight by Peter Watts explores interesting ideas about conscience and intelligence, but these ideas are wrapped in a mediocre action movie plot that becomes nonsensical by the end.
I really like Ray Nayler’s work, who intersects his real experience in international politics with science fiction technology. His Tusks of Extinction uses the sci-fi notion of brain transfer and bringing back mammoths to explore the economical pressures behind poaching. His “Where the axe is buried” explores surveillance state technology with political bodies that feel like real modern nations.
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.
Absolutely. There are many axis with which to judge books. Some have terrible characters and a mediocre plot, but amazing world building (I'm looking at you Brandon Sanderson). Some have amazing characters and decent plot in a forgettable world. It's rare you see authors good at all the various things they could be good at. I read enough to view books like a lot of folks view TV. Some of it is just filler. It's okay to forget about it. It was just there to distract you from one point in time to another and there's nothing deeper than that.
I'm always surprised at the love TINAD gets, when I never hear "Ra" mentioned. From the same author, in my opinion a better story, doesn't rely on the whole SCP thing (which I never got into).
TINAD didn't stick with me at all beyond the time I spent reading it, whereas Ra did in a way.
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
Why would you disagree with the parent post and then fail to provide the title of the book in your own response? Just give the name of the book, please.
Log entry: Tried building a wall out of hard drives, but Gate walked around them and kept coming. Walls of information ineffective. I've forgotten my name, so I suspect this may be my final entry.
I dislike the ending, at least of v2. In it, the author basically gives a fleshed out (christian, neoplatonist) 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.
This has been my feeling on Dune book 4 - God Emperor of Dune. While it contains several great banger quotes, it leans way more conservative than the previous books to the point that it was difficult to finish. "Oh no, female warriors kissing! ICK!!" and Leto's whole "Humanity _NEEDS_ me as GOD EMPEROR because this IS JUST THE ONLY WAYYY!" are just some examples.
Book 1-3 of Dune are masterpieces IMO. Book 4 was still good although I didn’t enjoy it as much as the trilogy. But I still consider it part of the same overall “Leto/Paul arc”.
Book 5-6 were okay, but didn’t live up to expectations.
To go on more of a tangent, I really thought these books would be impossible to turn into films, but the Villeneuve films are good so far!
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.
> It describes most Blake Crouch and Peter Clines novels.
I vaguely recall liking Dark Matter. I've still got Recursion on a shelf around here somewhere waiting to be read. Still haven't read any Peter Clines. Now I'm not sure I want to. :-)
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.
If the take is religion is itself the weapon and the depiction given is mere evidence of that, OK, that's at least avoids the ending being totally awful. HOWEVER
The book spends much of its time saying the transcendent cannot even be represented, to people, to us the read -- then just represents it, and in a tawdry christian way.
I think the violation of that norm, as well as the ending being played straight -- with literally a long paragraph explaining with ideaspace is... that's a fourth-wall break into christianity imv
Which makes the whole book read as, "the issue with humans is our physical bodies in a fallen world which are limited. just die, go to heaven, then you can know/represent/understand everything. Yay! Death!"
OK. Just kinda naff.
It reads as a religious person who accidentally wrote a good sci-fi book then hurridly, at the end, reminds us all that its really a parable with a Noble Message that in Death all things are trascended.
I read the book and at no time did I think "Christianity". It seems like motivated reasoning on your part. At no time did the book ever preach, or was even moralistic.
I'm referring to the ending of the published version, which is quite different than v1, which ends abburptly, in particular the sections before and after:
> “She steps back from him. She flexes what could be wings.”
> “In ideatic space everything is possible and everything is real and every metaphor is apt. She sees a galaxy of shining points: people, all the people who have ever existed, packed almost densely enough to form a continuum, living and dead, real and fictional and borderline. Similar people, who think in similar ways and who stand for similar things, are closer together. Significant people, the famous and iconic, are brighter. There are stars for inanimate entities, too, and events and abstracts: countries, homes, works of art, births and first steps and words, shocks and dramas, archetypes, numbers and equations, long arcs of stories, grand mythologies, philosophies, politics, tropes. Every truth and lie is here. Ideatic space itself—the human conception of it, at least—is here too, a fixed point embedded inside itself. The idea of the Unknown Organization is here. The idea of Adam Quinn is here. Marie, rising, waking, is here. And occupying the same space as the first brilliant spiral is a second, its counterpart, a galaxy whose points are relationships between the points of the first: what each person means to each other person. Loves, mutual and unrequited; admirations, aspirations, intimidations, fears, and revulsions. Conceptions and misconceptions. There is Adam’s shining link with Marie, and Marie’s link back to Adam. And Marie’s link to the Organization. And at the core of the whole dazzling ecosystem is an ultimate singular point, to which every other point is connected: humanity.
> And the whole thing, the entirety of human ideatic space, is being torn apart. U-3125 hangs above it, a monumental, blinding new presence, a singular entity more massive and luminous than both spirals combined. Its malevolent gravity drags humanity and all human ideas into its orbit, warping them beyond recognition. Beneath it, within its context, everything becomes corrupted into the worst version of itself. It takes joy and turns it into vindictive glee; it takes self-reliance and turns it into solipsistic psychosis; it turns love into smothering assault, pride into humiliation, families into traps, safety into paranoia, peace into discontent. It turns people into people who do not see people as people. And civilizations, ultimately, into abominations.
> U-3125 is titanic in its structure, brain-breaking in its topology. It comes from another part of ideatic space, a place where ideas exist on a scale entirely beyond those of humans. Its wrongness and[…]”
> “She sets a course. Outbound, to the deepest limit of ideatic space.”
Etc. The references to U3125 incarnating, and it being The Adversary. And the explicit ascention narrative with Mary getting wings, flying thru clouds of Ideas -- which are actually animate and incarnated in this world, ie., they are souls. I mean, it's terribly misjudged ending
> 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.
The core conceit lent itself so well to a (subverted) introductory "As you know" chapter that I didn't even notice it until I'd read it. Bravo for that alone.
That said, from the review: "open source maintainership as cosmic horror." Genuine laugh.
I wonder if this is for the rewrite or the first version.
I read the first version and thought the first half was good and that the second half felt clunky. To the point where i don’t recommend it to anyone (not a huge negative, there’s just better books out there).
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.)
Same!
I just finished the book a few days ago. The first half is really good, a cool premise and interesting story. The second half just got a bit too weird for me and by the final chapter I was happy it was finished lol.
They were being snarky about a comment when they literally didn't read the entire sentences they were being snarky about. No, I don't think I was unnecessarily harsh.
I had the same issue. I figured it out before I'd have commented similarly, but I completely understand where the confusion came from and I don't attribute it to your reading skills.
The first few chapters of that book are some of the coolest I've ever read. I agree it really drops off in the second half, but would still recommend it to people.
This review is just a plot synopsis. There are no quotes from the book to give me a sense of the quality of the writing. The review feels targeted at somebody who is already bought into the premise, not somebody from the outside who wants to know if "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is a good book or not. In that sense, it totally fails as a book review.
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.
Yes, I read reviews to learn if a book is good or not. Quotes from the book that are carefully selected often help to showcase what the author is capable of, on top of a clear description of their writing style. I want the reviewer to sell me on what moved them.
That is different than whether or not the reviewer was compelled by the ideas in the book. If the reviewer is a good writer, then I've learned something. Then, I know that somebody who is a good writer thought the ideas in a book were interesting, which by the transitive property, implies the author being reviewed is also a good writer. In this case, I don't think the reviewer is a very interesting writer, so I'm not convinced that they are a good judge of interesting writing.
That's interesting, here's a perspective from a different type of reader. I tend to read very old books, usually non-fiction, so 'reviews' are usually wikipedia articles, or references by other authors (the more references the more a classic it is).
usually it's the context around the book what people write about, where it was written, who wrote it, what was going on in their life. But if it's older perhaps not much is known, so the older it is increasingly it becomes at when it was read, where it was conserved, what it means to those who read it. If it's sufficiently old, there's several phases of 'rediscoveries' of the book, and the actual contents itself start losing importance as the book becomes more about past readers and how they influenced subsequent writing.
It would never occur to you to decide whether to read Luca Pacioli's accounting treatise based on some passages describing how you should keep your daily book, or whether to read Deuteronomy based on the headcount of some obscure tribe from old middle east, like there's no banger it's more about inmersion, and there isn't one way to absorb and interpret the content, because we are so far away from its writing, that the connection between the writer and reader is very faint.
So this feels normal to me, and the comparision felt funny, so I once again I found myself writing a hacker news comment
I say this with no malice, but you are weird. Being weird is cool! Reading nothing but historical manuscripts is rad! But the historical lens and the literary lens, as you yourself stated, are totally different.
Though, honestly, it would be fun to read reviews of ancient texts that are written like modern literary reviews. I guess we do get that, but only for new translations of the Odyssey or Beowulf or whatever. Those essays often dive into both the translation and the text in its original language (if the reviewer is fluent enough).
It sounds like you're describing a summary (which does not deal with quality) rather than a review (which necessarily deals with quality). The posted writing seems to fall somewhere in between.
> If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book.
I don't read complete plot summaries of books that I ever plan to read. That's why I look for "reviews." The only reason it's hard to write a review is because you can't give away the plot, but you have to give a sense of the appeal and the quality of the book. Otherwise, it's just a summary.
I can't know what books are available on the market through introspection. The only way I can know about them is through being informed. I don't want to read a complete plot summary of a book I have yet to read. If the only way I can find out about the existence of books is by having the plot spoiled, that's not optimal.
edit: Also, tbh, if a book's plot is good, I don't need you to tell it to me. The person who came up with the plot already carefully came up with the way they wanted to tell it to me. Not sure why you think you can do better if you think the book is good. If the book is awful to read but the plot is interesting, feel free.
> It is a good book by the way.
The reason this doesn't work as a review is because I don't know you, and I don't know what you like. If you can say this in a way in which it doesn't matter whether I know you or what you like, and give away the least plot possible to accomplish this, you've written what most people are looking for in a review.
Agreed, and plot itself doesn't make a good book either. Some have very interesting plots but terrible prose and pacing while others are vice versa. Therefore a "review" that is merely a plot summary actually says nothing of the quality of the work.
If you say to just read the book then what's even the point of writing a review? I could say the same about any book which renders the advice meaningless.
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):
According to that site, Robert Kennedy's speech on the night Martin Luther King was killed[1] was almost entirely the product of GenAI, as were both of Obama's inaugural addresses[1][2].
By this logic, I'd venture a guess that "AI" was also responsible for some of Shakespeare's most famous lines.
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.
I don't see a coherent plot so far. The first chapter is very fun to read. So is the second chapter, but to a lesser extent. But all the chapters seem to have the same gimmick, [Consider shocking scenario X if people were just forgetting certain things].
I also don't understand why the antimemes have physical manifestations. There doesn't have to be a reason, but this means that the story is no longer about the exploration of the central concept (antimemes).
It's surely not a great book and if you are someone who reads a book every few months i wouldn't recommend it. It's very weird and different and fun, though. I suggest it for people who read a lot of sci-fi and are looking for something that doesn't feel the same as 10 other books they've already read.
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 whatever version of this book was available to download in 2020 and really enjoyed it. Some very original ideas. I didn't find the writing clunky, and I read way too much.
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.
My mission was to create a Sci-fi Noir episode of the Twilight Zone by way of David Lynch and Phillip K. Dick. Big shout out to Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller for speaking to my soul in Severance. And of course to the enigmatic QNTM for sparking my imagination with the original story, "We Need to Talk About 55". Long live the SCP Foundation.
I happen to be in the middle of this book right now, so I only lightly skimmed tfa, but my copy is about Marie Quinn, not as Diehl says, Marion Wheeler. I do recall that name from an older, less cohesive 2020 ebook version that I had started reading years ago but set aside. Are there different protagonists in different markets? Or different perceived realities?
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 really appreciate that sentiment, but on the other hand 98% of the books I buy I won’t read a second time (because reading a new book will almost always trump rereading an old one), so I’m actually fine with not owning most of them, especially at $1.99 prices. The few that I deeply care about I buy a physical copy of.
It's a trade-off. I love the convenience of ebooks, but not owning my books is just categorically unacceptable to me. I want my daughter and anyone else coming after me to have free access to them, not to have to jump through Amazon's hoops (if such hoops even exist) for access.
I have a Kobo that I use to read the non-DRM ebooks I'm able to acquire. One such source is downloads from the Kobo store, when publishers make the non-DRM file available.
I use a kindle but I have never bought a book on the kindle store ever (been using it for 10 years). Totally doable and not hard to avoid... especially since the smaller stores not only have better sales but the author typically gets more money too.
They used to allow downloads of all books, which you could then rip the DRM from, but they got rid of that last year. Huge disappointment, and is why I don't buy books on Kindle anymore.
It's an enjoyable read, hopefully it's the start of a whole new arc in the series with more to come. My only real complaint is it's short and I want more. If you never read his other Interdependency series, it's also great.
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.
A malicious antimeme would be a dark pattern in web design for handling privacy/data/etc. Something designed to satisfy whatever law/regulation requires them to have the option while making the ability to find/remember/interact with it as hard as possible.
Another candidate is the common usage of memory-holing, where important information is removed from public perception maliciously. The Dubai Chocolate thing technically falls into here, as does the whole "war in Iran to distract from the Epstein files" thing. Frankly the whole Epstein stuff is riddled with malicious memes and antimemes to deliberately muddy the waters. Similar to deliberate attempts to inject insane conspiracy beliefs "the moon controls our brains" into conspiracy theories that are too close to something real "mk-ultra".
Consciousness for an antimeme is more of a classification error in my mind, as consciousness as a concept is permanently warped. But you could describe a secret society/dark family secret as a form of living antimeme, hiding some information and preventing it from being shared using a variety of means.
Oh nice example! I guess more generally it's possible for an antimeme to spread if the mechanism of transmission doesn't involve conscious transmission.
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.
TBH, the ending of Ra was a big letdown for me and though I like the small stories, I have the feeling that the author has issue building larger arcs. Still curious about this one and might read it just for the premise.
I listened to the Audible version and either I read a completely different book or the anti-memetic effects are real, because the main character in the article has a different name and the plot synopsis doesn’t seem to match up.
My short review would be: the book is very one-note, it’s like a horror movie that keeps doing the same jumpscare over and over again. Despite this I managed to enjoy it.
It's got some provocative ideas, which Stephen foregrounds.
It's got a great hook, and like most writing incubated under circumstances like this, it leans hard into polished sharp introduction into a well-considered world with a very specific flavor.
It's also—no better way to put it—crappy as a novel.
It's not because the author can't string sentences together.
It's because that's not what makes a novel function as a novel.
Epic opening and premise establishment: 10/10
Nice "plot twist", predictable in its inevitability if not its specifics; conforms to genre: 7/10
Narrative arc: 2/10
Ability to sustain meaningful tension and interest while working through the de rigeur mechanics of filling hundreds of pages: 1/10
I get that there is a new readership with different expectations and styles of reading. (Looking at you tiktok; looking at you Dungeon Crawler Carl; looking at most successful YA fiction especially that which gets SPICEY and is released in 8-book series with a new volume every 11 months)
If you're silverback and relish long-form fiction as previously conceived: set expectations accordingly.
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.
Yeah, it's trying to cohere the structure of the book with the topic matter which I really appreciate. It doesn't always quite land, but I think it was really worthwhile. Although I can understand how someone who is looking for a "normal" novel might be dissatisfied. But to me it's a bit like house of leaves, you need to accept the meta-conceit of the book being subject to the effect of its contents.
As someone who has a low opinion of House of Leaves,
and was e.g. entirely immune to the charms of Twin Peaks,
I believe you're right.
But even then... once this devolved into what felt like a teeth-clenching march to the Final Battle, on the basis AFAI can tell that this is what the author understood Novels Must Do,
it wasn't even providing the pleasures you get from just floating along.
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.
The book was good but I struggled to finish it. You as a reader are encouraged to read because the ideas are so good but then it becomes hard to endure through to whatever resolution was waiting. For those unfamiliar, it will feel something like Momento - you start to feel yourself changing as you work through it. Worth a go for anyone looking for something different.
I just finished this book and complained about it the whole time. The prose is amateur and peppered with cliches (e.g. you should be fined for publishing the phrase "their suit was so sharp it could cut"). His attempt to write about the inner thoughts of the characters was pretty simple. The descriptions of violence and horror also felt child-like, especially the dialogue during those moments (e.g. Redd's introduction). The landscapes are bland, with lots of repetition. Personally, the redaction technique got boring fast when he would take up entire pages of the book to convey absent memories. He could use his words to convey this instead of black-boxes.
I will give the author credit on how they deal with their characters' memories and the re-development of their thoughts, and the usage of time-jumping was reasonable (some books jump around too much, as if these time-skips improve a boring plot). Also the convention for how they solve their dilemma was enjoyable.
Overall, I think the author relies too much on a vocal fandom around the SCP Foundation to glorify the book. I think there is potential for a saga of books but there needs to be more effort in the drafting and editing process to raise the quality of the books to the level the universe deserves.
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.
What about “…it could cut the hairs of a butterflies balls”
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.
Glasshouse[1] by Charles Stross
Permutation City[2] by Greg Egan
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)[3] by Dennis E. Taylor
Halting State[4] by Charles Stross
Singularity Sky[5] by Charles Stross
Dungeon Crawler Carl[6] by Matt Dinniman
Zero World[7] by Jason M. Hough
The Shockwave Rider[8] by John Brunner
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_(novel)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City
[3]: https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse/dp/166822...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Crawler_Carl
[7]: https://www.jasonhough.com/book/zero-world
[8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider
> Permutation City[2] by Greg Egan
That was a good mindbender indeed. I'd add "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C. Clarke and Steven Baxter. Beware of spoilers high up the wikipedia page [0]. Tells a good tale of unexpected externalities of disruptive technology introduction.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days
Annihilation By Jeff VanderMeer
Diaspora by Greg Egan
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (this one is a bit like doing homework but worth it imo)
If you vibe with short stories Exhalation by Ted Chiang Crystal Nights by Greg Egan isn't bad either
I love all these. I'd add Blightsight by Peter Watts to the list. It has the creepy, psychological bent of Annihilation combined with the hard science elements common to qntm's, Neal Stephenson's and Greg Egan's books.
> Diaspora by Greg Egan
Basically anything by Egan is gold, IMO.
> Annihilation By Jeff VanderMeer
I wanted to like this, as the premise was fascinating and the word-smithing was pretty good. But something about it left me feeling a little disappointed at the end. More so the end of the entire trilogy, than Annihilation by itself though, IIRC.
Great list, thanks. Seconding Exhalation, that story in particular but also the whole collection. Guess I'm checking out Egan next.
His book is great, but to be clear I feel like he writes exactly one book. I've read it in many forms and it's an amazing book. But don't be surprised when you realize that every book is just him trying to find a new way to look at the same object over and over again.
Very enjoyable but his short stories are great because they force him to focus on one idea instead of how his whole world view fits together.
I’m going to suggest books with prose I like: - The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway - Butcher’s Crossing, Willams - Legs, Kennedy - The Passenger, McCarthy
As for sci-fi: Dune!
Blindsight by Peter Watts explores interesting ideas about conscience and intelligence, but these ideas are wrapped in a mediocre action movie plot that becomes nonsensical by the end.
I really like Ray Nayler’s work, who intersects his real experience in international politics with science fiction technology. His Tusks of Extinction uses the sci-fi notion of brain transfer and bringing back mammoths to explore the economical pressures behind poaching. His “Where the axe is buried” explores surveillance state technology with political bodies that feel like real modern nations.
“Valuable humans in transit”, maybe?
The “Ancillary” series, for sure.
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.
Absolutely. There are many axis with which to judge books. Some have terrible characters and a mediocre plot, but amazing world building (I'm looking at you Brandon Sanderson). Some have amazing characters and decent plot in a forgettable world. It's rare you see authors good at all the various things they could be good at. I read enough to view books like a lot of folks view TV. Some of it is just filler. It's okay to forget about it. It was just there to distract you from one point in time to another and there's nothing deeper than that.
I'm always surprised at the love TINAD gets, when I never hear "Ra" mentioned. From the same author, in my opinion a better story, doesn't rely on the whole SCP thing (which I never got into).
TINAD didn't stick with me at all beyond the time I spent reading it, whereas Ra did in a way.
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.
This article says “Book Review:” but then doesn’t provide the title of a book. I’m confused.
:)
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
Whoa, you mean bringing terminally online memes into the real world is awkward and cringe? How unexpected
Maybe the author's response was appropriate and it was you who missed the joke
What are you talking about? Did you perhaps cross-post by accident to the wrong thread?
It's in the title: "There is no Antimemetics Division" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870256-there-is-no-ant...
What title?
Why would you disagree with the parent post and then fail to provide the title of the book in your own response? Just give the name of the book, please.
What book? There is no book discussed in this article
What article? This is an HN-only discussion post.
What is HN?
Hungarian notation.
Weird HN bug: I somehow managed to get to an orphan /reply page not attached to any submission thread.
I suppose this joke only works when you've read it. I should take my meds, else I'll forget.
You can’t forget to take class W mnestics. Not unless someone prevents you from taking them.
Just took mine. Please take proper quarantine measures when reading back these comments then, or you'll put us all at risk.
Log entry: Tried building a wall out of hard drives, but Gate walked around them and kept coming. Walls of information ineffective. I've forgotten my name, so I suspect this may be my final entry.
What article?
I dislike the ending, at least of v2. In it, the author basically gives a fleshed out (christian, neoplatonist) 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.
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.
This has been my feeling on Dune book 4 - God Emperor of Dune. While it contains several great banger quotes, it leans way more conservative than the previous books to the point that it was difficult to finish. "Oh no, female warriors kissing! ICK!!" and Leto's whole "Humanity _NEEDS_ me as GOD EMPEROR because this IS JUST THE ONLY WAYYY!" are just some examples.
Book 1-3 of Dune are masterpieces IMO. Book 4 was still good although I didn’t enjoy it as much as the trilogy. But I still consider it part of the same overall “Leto/Paul arc”.
Book 5-6 were okay, but didn’t live up to expectations.
To go on more of a tangent, I really thought these books would be impossible to turn into films, but the Villeneuve films are good so far!
I think you may have missed the point of GEoD
Did I lose chapters or is v1 horribly different? It was so psychologically defeating I was in a very weird malaise for a week.
Some were edited out for more linear structure, some were dropped due to copyright.
I enjoyed both versions, though the ending in v1 is somewhat crumpled
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.
> It describes most Blake Crouch and Peter Clines novels.
I vaguely recall liking Dark Matter. I've still got Recursion on a shelf around here somewhere waiting to be read. Still haven't read any Peter Clines. Now I'm not sure I want to. :-)
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.
If the take is religion is itself the weapon and the depiction given is mere evidence of that, OK, that's at least avoids the ending being totally awful. HOWEVER
The book spends much of its time saying the transcendent cannot even be represented, to people, to us the read -- then just represents it, and in a tawdry christian way.
I think the violation of that norm, as well as the ending being played straight -- with literally a long paragraph explaining with ideaspace is... that's a fourth-wall break into christianity imv
Which makes the whole book read as, "the issue with humans is our physical bodies in a fallen world which are limited. just die, go to heaven, then you can know/represent/understand everything. Yay! Death!"
OK. Just kinda naff.
It reads as a religious person who accidentally wrote a good sci-fi book then hurridly, at the end, reminds us all that its really a parable with a Noble Message that in Death all things are trascended.
I read the book and at no time did I think "Christianity". It seems like motivated reasoning on your part. At no time did the book ever preach, or was even moralistic.
I'm referring to the ending of the published version, which is quite different than v1, which ends abburptly, in particular the sections before and after:
> “She steps back from him. She flexes what could be wings.”
> “In ideatic space everything is possible and everything is real and every metaphor is apt. She sees a galaxy of shining points: people, all the people who have ever existed, packed almost densely enough to form a continuum, living and dead, real and fictional and borderline. Similar people, who think in similar ways and who stand for similar things, are closer together. Significant people, the famous and iconic, are brighter. There are stars for inanimate entities, too, and events and abstracts: countries, homes, works of art, births and first steps and words, shocks and dramas, archetypes, numbers and equations, long arcs of stories, grand mythologies, philosophies, politics, tropes. Every truth and lie is here. Ideatic space itself—the human conception of it, at least—is here too, a fixed point embedded inside itself. The idea of the Unknown Organization is here. The idea of Adam Quinn is here. Marie, rising, waking, is here. And occupying the same space as the first brilliant spiral is a second, its counterpart, a galaxy whose points are relationships between the points of the first: what each person means to each other person. Loves, mutual and unrequited; admirations, aspirations, intimidations, fears, and revulsions. Conceptions and misconceptions. There is Adam’s shining link with Marie, and Marie’s link back to Adam. And Marie’s link to the Organization. And at the core of the whole dazzling ecosystem is an ultimate singular point, to which every other point is connected: humanity.
> And the whole thing, the entirety of human ideatic space, is being torn apart. U-3125 hangs above it, a monumental, blinding new presence, a singular entity more massive and luminous than both spirals combined. Its malevolent gravity drags humanity and all human ideas into its orbit, warping them beyond recognition. Beneath it, within its context, everything becomes corrupted into the worst version of itself. It takes joy and turns it into vindictive glee; it takes self-reliance and turns it into solipsistic psychosis; it turns love into smothering assault, pride into humiliation, families into traps, safety into paranoia, peace into discontent. It turns people into people who do not see people as people. And civilizations, ultimately, into abominations.
> U-3125 is titanic in its structure, brain-breaking in its topology. It comes from another part of ideatic space, a place where ideas exist on a scale entirely beyond those of humans. Its wrongness and[…]”
> “She sets a course. Outbound, to the deepest limit of ideatic space.”
Etc. The references to U3125 incarnating, and it being The Adversary. And the explicit ascention narrative with Mary getting wings, flying thru clouds of Ideas -- which are actually animate and incarnated in this world, ie., they are souls. I mean, it's terribly misjudged ending
Is this book just riffing about embedding space? I thought about reading it eventually, but the quoted passage is kind of annoying/tedious
No, it really just gets like that at the end which is what this chain has been going over.
Could be religion/Christian.
But, also, all systems. Capitalism. Governments.
I took it as all 'groups of people' form these 'structures', that can then take on a life of their own.
I don't this this was supposed to be specifically christian
> 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.
You can read the original here https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
There is also the rough draft. I've only read the wiki and the first draft of book
Oddly I gifted the actual book away before reading it (I can buy it again, I thought)
I liked this one a lot. If you like weird fiction and enjoyed Jeff Vandermeer's Annhilation, there's a good chance you'll like this.
If you don't like weird fiction, odds are you'll bounce off it.
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.
The core conceit lent itself so well to a (subverted) introductory "As you know" chapter that I didn't even notice it until I'd read it. Bravo for that alone.
That said, from the review: "open source maintainership as cosmic horror." Genuine laugh.
I wonder if this is for the rewrite or the first version.
I read the first version and thought the first half was good and that the second half felt clunky. To the point where i don’t recommend it to anyone (not a huge negative, there’s just better books out there).
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.)
The article says:
"And at the top of the food chain sits SCP-3125 (renamed in the published edition, but the designation is so perfect I am using it anyway) ..."
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.
Same! I just finished the book a few days ago. The first half is really good, a cool premise and interesting story. The second half just got a bit too weird for me and by the final chapter I was happy it was finished lol.
I liked piecing the story together in the SCP wiki.
Later I read the first version of the book and it was okay, but the vibes were a bit lost.
The new version of the book I didn't even finish.
> the first half was good and that the second half felt clunky
> The second half was garbage, but the first half was so good
so you had the same reaction?
> To the point where i don’t recommend it to anyone
> but the first half was so good and original I'd recommend it just for that
Attension span so short you couldn't even make it to the second half of the sentence before dismissing it
I think this comment is unnecessarily harsh.
To anyone confused (like me), the commenters above had opposite recommendations despite having similar opinions of the book.
They were being snarky about a comment when they literally didn't read the entire sentences they were being snarky about. No, I don't think I was unnecessarily harsh.
fair enough, i guess my brain got stuck on reconciling the first thing that i whiffed on the differing recommendations lol
I had the same issue. I figured it out before I'd have commented similarly, but I completely understand where the confusion came from and I don't attribute it to your reading skills.
The first few chapters of that book are some of the coolest I've ever read. I agree it really drops off in the second half, but would still recommend it to people.
The rewrite is excellent
This review is just a plot synopsis. There are no quotes from the book to give me a sense of the quality of the writing. The review feels targeted at somebody who is already bought into the premise, not somebody from the outside who wants to know if "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is a good book or not. In that sense, it totally fails as a book review.
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.
Yes, I read reviews to learn if a book is good or not. Quotes from the book that are carefully selected often help to showcase what the author is capable of, on top of a clear description of their writing style. I want the reviewer to sell me on what moved them.
That is different than whether or not the reviewer was compelled by the ideas in the book. If the reviewer is a good writer, then I've learned something. Then, I know that somebody who is a good writer thought the ideas in a book were interesting, which by the transitive property, implies the author being reviewed is also a good writer. In this case, I don't think the reviewer is a very interesting writer, so I'm not convinced that they are a good judge of interesting writing.
That's interesting, here's a perspective from a different type of reader. I tend to read very old books, usually non-fiction, so 'reviews' are usually wikipedia articles, or references by other authors (the more references the more a classic it is).
usually it's the context around the book what people write about, where it was written, who wrote it, what was going on in their life. But if it's older perhaps not much is known, so the older it is increasingly it becomes at when it was read, where it was conserved, what it means to those who read it. If it's sufficiently old, there's several phases of 'rediscoveries' of the book, and the actual contents itself start losing importance as the book becomes more about past readers and how they influenced subsequent writing.
It would never occur to you to decide whether to read Luca Pacioli's accounting treatise based on some passages describing how you should keep your daily book, or whether to read Deuteronomy based on the headcount of some obscure tribe from old middle east, like there's no banger it's more about inmersion, and there isn't one way to absorb and interpret the content, because we are so far away from its writing, that the connection between the writer and reader is very faint.
So this feels normal to me, and the comparision felt funny, so I once again I found myself writing a hacker news comment
I say this with no malice, but you are weird. Being weird is cool! Reading nothing but historical manuscripts is rad! But the historical lens and the literary lens, as you yourself stated, are totally different.
Though, honestly, it would be fun to read reviews of ancient texts that are written like modern literary reviews. I guess we do get that, but only for new translations of the Odyssey or Beowulf or whatever. Those essays often dive into both the translation and the text in its original language (if the reviewer is fluent enough).
I bet you would love the Cairo Genizah.
It sounds like you're describing a summary (which does not deal with quality) rather than a review (which necessarily deals with quality). The posted writing seems to fall somewhere in between.
> If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book.
I don't read complete plot summaries of books that I ever plan to read. That's why I look for "reviews." The only reason it's hard to write a review is because you can't give away the plot, but you have to give a sense of the appeal and the quality of the book. Otherwise, it's just a summary.
I can't know what books are available on the market through introspection. The only way I can know about them is through being informed. I don't want to read a complete plot summary of a book I have yet to read. If the only way I can find out about the existence of books is by having the plot spoiled, that's not optimal.
edit: Also, tbh, if a book's plot is good, I don't need you to tell it to me. The person who came up with the plot already carefully came up with the way they wanted to tell it to me. Not sure why you think you can do better if you think the book is good. If the book is awful to read but the plot is interesting, feel free.
> It is a good book by the way.
The reason this doesn't work as a review is because I don't know you, and I don't know what you like. If you can say this in a way in which it doesn't matter whether I know you or what you like, and give away the least plot possible to accomplish this, you've written what most people are looking for in a review.
Agreed, and plot itself doesn't make a good book either. Some have very interesting plots but terrible prose and pacing while others are vice versa. Therefore a "review" that is merely a plot summary actually says nothing of the quality of the work.
If you say to just read the book then what's even the point of writing a review? I could say the same about any book which renders the advice meaningless.
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'm not so sure about false positives being rare.. ZeroGPT flags the Gettysburg Address as 96% AI generated:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1s0y...
(I tried it just now and got the same result as in that post)
According to that site, Robert Kennedy's speech on the night Martin Luther King was killed[1] was almost entirely the product of GenAI, as were both of Obama's inaugural addresses[1][2].
By this logic, I'd venture a guess that "AI" was also responsible for some of Shakespeare's most famous lines.
[1] https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-famil...
[2] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/realitycheck/the_press_...
[3] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/0...
Fair enough, I accept "the blog post was written by someone from the 1800s" as an alternative hypothesis.
edit: For what it's worth, I also just tested the Gettysburg Address (using the "Bliss Copy" from [1]), and got a "100% Human" score.
[1] https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettys...
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).
Oh no, a book that tells a story.
24 days ago: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363133
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 listened to 30% of the book on audio.
I don't see a coherent plot so far. The first chapter is very fun to read. So is the second chapter, but to a lesser extent. But all the chapters seem to have the same gimmick, [Consider shocking scenario X if people were just forgetting certain things].
I also don't understand why the antimemes have physical manifestations. There doesn't have to be a reason, but this means that the story is no longer about the exploration of the central concept (antimemes).
It's surely not a great book and if you are someone who reads a book every few months i wouldn't recommend it. It's very weird and different and fun, though. I suggest it for people who read a lot of sci-fi and are looking for something that doesn't feel the same as 10 other books they've already read.
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 whatever version of this book was available to download in 2020 and really enjoyed it. Some very original ideas. I didn't find the writing clunky, and I read way too much.
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.
Short film: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363133
I happen to be in the middle of this book right now, so I only lightly skimmed tfa, but my copy is about Marie Quinn, not as Diehl says, Marion Wheeler. I do recall that name from an older, less cohesive 2020 ebook version that I had started reading years ago but set aside. Are there different protagonists in different markets? Or different perceived realities?
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.
Good timing, the Kindle version is $1.99 right now.
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 really appreciate that sentiment, but on the other hand 98% of the books I buy I won’t read a second time (because reading a new book will almost always trump rereading an old one), so I’m actually fine with not owning most of them, especially at $1.99 prices. The few that I deeply care about I buy a physical copy of.
This disregards the benefit of a single device that is easy to carry. Love where this is come from so maybe do both if you can.
It's a trade-off. I love the convenience of ebooks, but not owning my books is just categorically unacceptable to me. I want my daughter and anyone else coming after me to have free access to them, not to have to jump through Amazon's hoops (if such hoops even exist) for access.
I have a Kobo that I use to read the non-DRM ebooks I'm able to acquire. One such source is downloads from the Kobo store, when publishers make the non-DRM file available.
I use a kindle but I have never bought a book on the kindle store ever (been using it for 10 years). Totally doable and not hard to avoid... especially since the smaller stores not only have better sales but the author typically gets more money too.
I own a kindle and use it daily. I just borrow all my ebooks from public libraries. I buy the books I want to keep, in physical form.
I borrowed it from the library.
Support your local library!
I basically always start with digital, if the book is good I always buy a physical copy for my shelf.
I do something similar - but I'm quite picky with books I buy due to limited physical space.
Amazon allows EPUB downloads for publishers that have chosen to go DRM-free.
They used to allow downloads of all books, which you could then rip the DRM from, but they got rid of that last year. Huge disappointment, and is why I don't buy books on Kindle anymore.
First I'm hearing of that, is there an easy way to tell that's available?
It usually says somewhere in the description I think. E.g. this one (good series, btw): https://www.amazon.com/Shattering-Peace-Old-Mans-Book-ebook/...
> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Not sure how universal that is, but I've seen similar language on several other books.
Oh wow, that's hidden. Thanks.
Wait, OMW book 7? Wtf? Thank you even more! That'll be up next after my Hyperion re-read (RIP Dan)
It's an enjoyable read, hopefully it's the start of a whole new arc in the series with more to come. My only real complaint is it's short and I want more. If you never read his other Interdependency series, it's also great.
I think I read all of his series, yeah. Interdependency was great.
I'm more interested in rewarding utility because that gives me better things.
Are there any real-life examples of antimemes? How would antimemes even propagate given that they'd "die out" immediately?
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.
A malicious antimeme would be a dark pattern in web design for handling privacy/data/etc. Something designed to satisfy whatever law/regulation requires them to have the option while making the ability to find/remember/interact with it as hard as possible.
Another candidate is the common usage of memory-holing, where important information is removed from public perception maliciously. The Dubai Chocolate thing technically falls into here, as does the whole "war in Iran to distract from the Epstein files" thing. Frankly the whole Epstein stuff is riddled with malicious memes and antimemes to deliberately muddy the waters. Similar to deliberate attempts to inject insane conspiracy beliefs "the moon controls our brains" into conspiracy theories that are too close to something real "mk-ultra".
Consciousness for an antimeme is more of a classification error in my mind, as consciousness as a concept is permanently warped. But you could describe a secret society/dark family secret as a form of living antimeme, hiding some information and preventing it from being shared using a variety of means.
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
Oh nice example! I guess more generally it's possible for an antimeme to spread if the mechanism of transmission doesn't involve conscious transmission.
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.
It’s a fun book. Definitely worth a read.
And very creepy too. I loved it.
Nice review; covers all the best points of the book, and its place in the world, without too many spoilers.
Crazy timing. My copy of this is being delivered today from the local bookshop. Great review.
It was a great book, but this review of it have its own value.
TBH, the ending of Ra was a big letdown for me and though I like the small stories, I have the feeling that the author has issue building larger arcs. Still curious about this one and might read it just for the premise.
Writing good endings is hard.
I liked Ra, but I liked Fine Structures more.
Couldn't finish it. I suppose it was not for me.
Loved this book. Definitely a mind trip
Fnord!
I listened to the Audible version and either I read a completely different book or the anti-memetic effects are real, because the main character in the article has a different name and the plot synopsis doesn’t seem to match up.
My short review would be: the book is very one-note, it’s like a horror movie that keeps doing the same jumpscare over and over again. Despite this I managed to enjoy it.
It was a fun read but I don’t understand the cult following this book has.
I read this.
It's got some provocative ideas, which Stephen foregrounds.
It's got a great hook, and like most writing incubated under circumstances like this, it leans hard into polished sharp introduction into a well-considered world with a very specific flavor.
It's also—no better way to put it—crappy as a novel.
It's not because the author can't string sentences together.
It's because that's not what makes a novel function as a novel.
Epic opening and premise establishment: 10/10
Nice "plot twist", predictable in its inevitability if not its specifics; conforms to genre: 7/10
Narrative arc: 2/10
Ability to sustain meaningful tension and interest while working through the de rigeur mechanics of filling hundreds of pages: 1/10
I get that there is a new readership with different expectations and styles of reading. (Looking at you tiktok; looking at you Dungeon Crawler Carl; looking at most successful YA fiction especially that which gets SPICEY and is released in 8-book series with a new volume every 11 months)
If you're silverback and relish long-form fiction as previously conceived: set expectations accordingly.
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.
Yeah, it's trying to cohere the structure of the book with the topic matter which I really appreciate. It doesn't always quite land, but I think it was really worthwhile. Although I can understand how someone who is looking for a "normal" novel might be dissatisfied. But to me it's a bit like house of leaves, you need to accept the meta-conceit of the book being subject to the effect of its contents.
As someone who has a low opinion of House of Leaves,
and was e.g. entirely immune to the charms of Twin Peaks,
I believe you're right.
But even then... once this devolved into what felt like a teeth-clenching march to the Final Battle, on the basis AFAI can tell that this is what the author understood Novels Must Do,
it wasn't even providing the pleasures you get from just floating along.
It was just a grind.
I can't take Adrian Tchaikovsky either...
Written by AI.
I have not read this book. I've been avoiding it for a while for the dumbest possible reason, which is that I only associate this book with SWE's.
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.
Exactly what a SWE would say.
I'm not a Single-Wombat Entity if that's what you're accusing me of. I do, in-fact, have multiple wombats making up my person.
The book was good but I struggled to finish it. You as a reader are encouraged to read because the ideas are so good but then it becomes hard to endure through to whatever resolution was waiting. For those unfamiliar, it will feel something like Momento - you start to feel yourself changing as you work through it. Worth a go for anyone looking for something different.