Antimemes: A Guest Post by qntm
A mind-blowing journey, this expanded version of the popular online novel is a sci-fi horror about humanity turning on itself after the introduction of “antimemes.” Read on for an exclusive essay from qntm on writing There Is No Antimemetics Division.
Hardcover $29.00
There Is No Antimemetics Division: A Novel
There Is No Antimemetics Division: A Novel
By qntm
In Stock Online
Hardcover $29.00
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.
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.
The notion of antimemes is one that I’ve been kicking around for years.
Ideas are like living organisms. They have a lifecycle to them: they are born, they spread from person to person, they replicate, they compete, they mutate, and they can die. Ideas form an ecosystem, and some ideas are fitter for survival in this ecosystem than others. These are the ideas which spread the fastest, because they’re catchy, they’re funny, they’re simple or smart or thought-provoking or outrageous. A meme is an idea which is contagious in this way. Want to see the ideatic ecosystem in action? Scroll through social media, or put on the news – sometimes, all of modern society feels like a constantly escalating war of ideas – a memetic war.
But what’s at the other end of that spectrum? What ideas do we not share? Either because the incentive is to keep them private – passwords, taboos, dirty secrets, gag orders – or because we just can’t remember them at all – boring tax law, complex equations, dreams…
I coined the term antimemes to describe these. And antimemes are a real phenomenon, clearly – this is just an umbrella term for a number of existing concepts.
But what about for the purposes of fiction? This is where I realised that there was the potential for a really exciting story. What happens if you have an adversary who is completely impossible for you to remember? What if someone weaponised your fallible, human memory against you? What could be lurking out in that endless ideatic darkness, and what could it want?
In There Is No Antimemetics Division, the titular Division’s task is to identify, study and protect the world from anomalous antimemes: things which no one can observe, no one can document, no one can photograph, no one can remember. It’s a job which seems impossible. Our protagonist, Marie Quinn, is head of Antimemetics. She is burned out, and she suffers from suspicious memory problems, and her team is slowly disappearing around her… but she is also resourceful, and extremely sharp.
This book started life as an exploration of what Marie would have to be like in order to survive in this universe. What procedures she and her Division would have to follow, what tools they would have to have at their disposal… what kind of antimemes would be routine for them, and what antimemes would be threatening and hazardous. As I explored these questions I discovered all kinds of fun and interesting answers.
But the story evolved as I was telling it, until it reached a natural ultimate question: what is the most dangerous antimeme which Quinn could face? Would she win? How could she win an antimemetic war, without ever knowing that she was fighting it?
I honestly didn’t know at the outset. I had to know. I wrote this book to find out.
qntm
