There Is No Antimemetics Division, qntm
There Is No Antimemetics Division, qntm
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There Is No Antimemetics Division

Author: qntm

Narrator: Rebecca Calder

Unabridged: 8 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/11/2025


Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Humanity is under assault by malevolent “antimemes”—ideas that attack memory, identity, and the fabric of reality itself—in this whip-smart tale of science-fiction horror, an entirely reimagined and expanded version of the beloved online novel.

“Utterly brilliant . . . a dazzling, confusing novel with a highly effective, creeping sense of dread . . . I can’t recommend it enough.”—Charlie Jane Anders, The Washington Post

“[An] unforgettable, mind-bendingly brilliant novel.”—The Guardian

They’re all around us, hiding in plain sight.

One could be in the room with you now, just to your left. You could be seeing it right now—but from this second to the next, you’ll forget that you did. If you managed to jot down a note, the paper would look blank to you afterward.

These entities can feed on your most cherished memories, the things that make you you—and you’ll never even know anything changed.

They can turn you into a living ghost—make it so you’re standing next to your spouse, screaming in their ear, and they won’t know you’re there.

They’re predators equipped with the ultimate camouflage, living black holes for information, able to consume our very memories of their existence.

And they aren’t just feeding on us. They’re invading.

But how do you fight an enemy when you can never even know that you’re at war? How do you contain something you can’t record or remember?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.

No, this is not your first day.

Reviews

Goodreads review by James on November 12, 2020

These stories scared the crap out of me. I think the idea of memes that are self-camouflaging, that eliminate their own traces, reflects a deep existential unease and questions about epistemological uncertainty, in a moment when 40% of Americans are lost in conspiracy theories, compounded by the nea......more

Goodreads review by Tim on December 31, 2020

As a premise, fantastic. Full of interesting ideas and some great storytelling, especially when focusing on human interactions. However, in broad sweep a disappointing book. If you start from an interesting logical premise, then add a shaky idea on top, then continue stacking shaky ideas one after t......more

Goodreads review by Brent on February 11, 2021

This book reads like the Laundry Files weird older sibling. Time jumps and memory gaps are used effectively to convey the struggle against inhuman threats to memory and identity. The plot spirals inward, sprinkling clues like breadcrumbs for you to piece together. If you like that kind of thing (as......more

Goodreads review by Sebastian on May 03, 2021

The idea is absolutely brilliant. Its implication on the story are refreshing and very amusing. The story gets mind-bending and the twists are pure pleasure. Honestly "The is no ..." is the most refreshing SF story I've read in a long time. At least the initial 50-60%. The final part gets very abstr......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on March 20, 2024

This was a constant challenge to wrap my head around conceptually, as well as follow the disjointed narrative structure. The concepts here are mind bending to the point of making my head hurt, akin to falling into the rabbit hole of a deep time travel paradox. The loosely stitched narrative, with fr......more


Quotes

“[An] unforgettable, mind-bendingly brilliant novel . . . There have been stories before about mysterious alien entities existing, hidden, within our world, and secret government departments tasked with protecting humanity. This debut pushes the idea to the most terrifying extreme.”The Guardian

“Astonishing. Pitch-perfect cosmic horror—and the pitch will break all the glass in your brain.”—M. R. Carey, #1 international bestselling author of The Girl with All the Gifts

“[A] superlative performance . . . in a class with anything by HPL, or Ligotti, or Clark Ashton Smith, or the more surreal stories by Ballard . . . QNTM has succeeded in infusing his tale with the identity confusion and paranoia of PKD’s A Scanner Darkly; with the esoteric paradigm-shattering illogic of Max Barry’s Lexicon; and with the transgalactic horrors of Colin Wilson’s The Mind Parasites.”Locus

“Utterly brilliant . . . [The] synopsis barely scratches the surfaces of the baroque weirdness of There Is No Antimemetics Division, a dazzling, confusing novel with a highly effective, creeping sense of dread. In a year that featured multiple novels about shared memories, this is a story about the horror of forgetting. . . . I can’t recommend it enough.”—Charlie Jane Anders, The Washington Post

“A stone-cold cosmic horror classic about a department trying to combat anomalous beings whose very nature makes them impossible to see or remember encountering . . . an incredible read.”—Adrian Tchaikovsky, Hugo Award–winning author of Children of Time and Service Model

There Is No Antimemetics Division is the coolest, smartest, mind-blowing-est novel to be published this year, and probably for many years to come. It is utterly unique, constantly surprising, genuinely unsettling, and a towering work of speculative fiction that 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

“An addictive, dizzying experience that will make you feel like your brain has been pulled apart and reassembled by a mad scientist. . . . What would be considered a mind-bending twist in another novel happens on every other page of There Is No Antimemetics Division. I’ve never read anything like it, unless I did and just forgot.”—Jason Pargin, New York Times bestselling author of John Dies at the End

“Gripping, thrilling cosmic horror . . . Read it, and don’t forget it.”Reactor

“A hugely entertaining, super smart, witty novel that is also nerve-shreddingly terrifying. While it’s packed with ideas, it puts human connection at its core, with an ending that is both tense and moving. It brought to mind The Lathe of Heaven and The Kraken Wakes—a timely book that is also one for the ages.”—Antonia Hodgson, author of The Raven Scholar, in Gizmodo

“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. . . . Highest possible recommendation.”—Scott Hawkins, author of The Library at Mount Char