There Is No Antimemetics Division
The thrilling new sci-fi horror novel, 'mind-bendingly brilliant' Guardian
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4.0 • 22 Ratings
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
'Astonishing' M. R. Carey, author of Infinity Gate
‘A hugely entertaining, super smart, witty novel that is also nerve-shreddingly terrifying… a timely book that is also one for the ages.’ Antonia Hodgson, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Raven Scholar
‘Utterly unique, constantly surprising, genuinely unsettling... may very well take its place among the best sci-fi novels of the century so far.' Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter
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An antimeme is an entity with self-censoring properties. Some are benign; but others, less so…
These entities can feed on your most cherished memories, the things that make you you – and you’ll never even know anything changed.
And they aren’t just feeding on us. They’re invading.
But how do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?
WELCOME TO THE ANTIMEMETICS DIVISION
NO, THIS IS NOT YOUR FIRST DAY
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'Compulsively readable, breathtakingly inventive.' SFX
‘Blisteringly intelligent, profoundly unsettling, and totally unforgettable.’ Thomas R. Weaver, author of Artificial Wisdom
‘No exaggeration, this is the most imaginative novel I have ever read. It's compulsively readable and exquisitely mind-blowing from the first paragraph to the last. I enjoyed every word.’ Scott Hawkins, author of The Library at Mount Char
'Unforgettable, mind-bendingly brilliant' The Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Qntm, the pen name of software developer Sam Hughes, makes his traditionally published debut (after the serialized online novel Ra) with this acrobatically absurdist tale of a team of special agents tasked with saving humanity from a menagerie of "Unknowns." These "memetic threats" come in many forms: from monsters and supernatural objects to "contagious ideas, which require containment just like any physical threat." What makes these Unknowns especially troublesome is that anyone who comes in contact with them loses their memories. Antimemetics Division director Marie Quinn is so desperate to learn more about the Unknowns that she doses her predecessor, Division founder Andrew Hilton, with a lethal memory-recovering drug. She discovers that the first Antimemetics unit was created within the British Army during WWII to combat "the idea of Nazism." When one of the Unknowns attaches itself to Quinn, she suspects the only way to get free of the memetic threats forever may involve destroying humanity. Meanwhile, her husband, a violinist with a genetic mutation that has spared his memory, tries to save her, but she no longer remembers him. The zany narrative is further complicated by some formalist flourishes, including pages blackened by a censor's pen and letters missing from words throughout. Hard sci-fi fans looking for riddles and spectacle will be entertained, if occasionally baffled.
Customer Reviews
Promising concept, confusing execution
I blitzed through the sample, fascinated and hooked and had to buy the book straight away. The book can almost be split into two, with the latter part being based more on read-between-the-lines chapters, which I didn’t find flowed as well as the opening. For me, I found several parts of the book were very jarring to try and comprehend, not the content itself but the content in relation to the story. With most books I find a vivid picture in my brain as I am reading, but I did struggle particularly with the second half to have a real concept of what was actually taking place and to visualise it. I know that is part of the premise of the way it’s written, and you could even say that it adds to the overall feel of what was occuring. But that feeling of not knowing - not being able to imagine - linked with the way the story ended left a slightly disappointing end to what was (at first) an enthralling idea. It’s worth reading, but I would have enjoyed the book being twice as long, with more descriptive writing and - if I’m totally honest - perhaps a dumbed down version of events as it was a challenge to try and keep up with the plot with the time skipping and some events being real and some not.