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Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

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Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#51

Post by the_af »

Interesting that there are two versions that I know of!

I watched this one first, and I prefer it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IiVeGAydE. I like the actress who plays Wheeler better (no disrespect to Jasika Nicole, she does a good job too and I loved her in Fringe), and the script seems to stick closer to the original short story form from the website. Is this new short based on the book? If so, it seems the dialogues in the book are... weaker maybe?

Things I liked in this short: the use of B&W, and I thought the actor who plays O5-8 is stronger in this version.

I wonder if this story could become a "standard" for indie directors to riff off?

Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#52

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

glenstein wrote: post #2

I jumped into the book after hearing all the buzz as it seemed like the big scifi hit of 2025. Killer premise and for the most part the fast pacing works... for the first third or so. But it you can feel the short story anthology vibe as it goes on and becomes practically a disconnected series of vignettes, and even the central idea itself loses cohesion. The Big Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels lik…

The core pitch becomes quite formulaic. It's a fun kind of formulaic, but all the SCPs are made from the same relatively small set of moving parts, painted with different colours and textures for each specific monster.

But as a concept it's still one of the freshest things to appear in SF this century, and it's a wonderful contrast to more standard action hero SF.

Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#53

Post by kranner »

glenstein wrote: post #2

I jumped into the book after hearing all the buzz as it seemed like the big scifi hit of 2025. Killer premise and for the most part the fast pacing works... for the first third or so. But it you can feel the short story anthology vibe as it goes on and becomes practically a disconnected series of vignettes, and even the central idea itself loses cohesion. The Big Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels lik…

My experience of the book was similar: the first third was great. Great idea, brilliantly executed. Definitely worth it for the first third alone.

In a way, maybe it going off-piste is coherent with the idea of the first third. I'm sure this was not the author's intent, but fun from an ironic perspective.

Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#54

Post by jodrellblank »

glenstein wrote: post #2

I jumped into the book after hearing all the buzz as it seemed like the big scifi hit of 2025. Killer premise and for the most part the fast pacing works... for the first third or so. But it you can feel the short story anthology vibe as it goes on and becomes practically a disconnected series of vignettes, and even the central idea itself loses cohesion. The Big Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels lik…

> the big scifi hit of 2025

I read the book in 2024 (before it was cool!), and have the email order as evidence, but quite fittingly I have almost no memory of what was in it, or how I found out about it.

Bit like the bad guys The Silence from Dr Who: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8Jc7sLbP8

Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#55

Post by presbyterian »

redfloatplane wrote: post #46
glenstein wrote: post #2

I jumped into the book after hearing all the buzz as it seemed like the big scifi hit of 2025. Killer premise and for the most part the fast pacing works... for the first third or so. But it you can feel the short story anthology vibe as it goes on and becomes practically a disconnected series of vignettes, and even the central idea itself loses cohesion. The Big Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels lik…

I wonder did you read the re-release or the original release. I believe it was recently re-released with a bit of an editing pass, but I haven't read that version myself. I just recently reread Fine Structure and it definitely had a strong sense of being written sequentially, one chapter after another, and (very) lightly edited after the fact. I'd recommend Valuable Humans in Transit for a short story collection by t…

I've read both, and the "editing pass" was minimal. Names changed and some scenes reworked a tiny bit, but it's the same thing. If you've read the original, I'd say don't bother with the new one.

Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#57

Post by rototrav »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #26
glenstein wrote: post #2

I jumped into the book after hearing all the buzz as it seemed like the big scifi hit of 2025. Killer premise and for the most part the fast pacing works... for the first third or so. But it you can feel the short story anthology vibe as it goes on and becomes practically a disconnected series of vignettes, and even the central idea itself loses cohesion. The Big Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels lik…

I read it based on a reddit search for 'good sci fi books' and that's it. Going in with no hype or expectations and I thought it was great. PS. HNers, any good sci-fi book recommendations?

Just read Lexicon by Max Barry (2013) - great sci-fi thriller that actually has a strong anti-memetic component. I wonder if it was an influence on qntm's book.

Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#58

Post by dsr_ »

tartuffe78 wrote: post #35
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it based on a reddit search for 'good sci fi books' and that's it. Going in with no hype or expectations and I thought it was great. PS. HNers, any good sci-fi book recommendations?

I just came across Hardwired from 1986, it's a cyberpunk dystopian future with lots of action. I loved it, some of it is very prescient, but with lots of 80s influence to an imagined future.

Interesting chain of descent: Walter Jon Williams wrote Hardwired, and R Talsorian Games based their tabletop RPG, Cyberpunk 2020, on it. That's the source material used for the computer RPG, Cyberpunk 2073.

Meanwhile, WJW followed up with Voice of the Whirlwind, which seems to be set about a century later, and drops enough references in Aristoi to place it as the third book in the same universe, quite possibly a thousand years later.

I recommend all three (and almost everything that WJW has written).

Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#59

Post by entropicdrifter »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #26
glenstein wrote: post #2

I jumped into the book after hearing all the buzz as it seemed like the big scifi hit of 2025. Killer premise and for the most part the fast pacing works... for the first third or so. But it you can feel the short story anthology vibe as it goes on and becomes practically a disconnected series of vignettes, and even the central idea itself loses cohesion. The Big Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels lik…

I read it based on a reddit search for 'good sci fi books' and that's it. Going in with no hype or expectations and I thought it was great. PS. HNers, any good sci-fi book recommendations?

The Diamond Age is feeling more and more prescient to me as time goes on

Re: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]

#60

Post by helterskelter »

glenstein wrote: post #2

I jumped into the book after hearing all the buzz as it seemed like the big scifi hit of 2025. Killer premise and for the most part the fast pacing works... for the first third or so. But it you can feel the short story anthology vibe as it goes on and becomes practically a disconnected series of vignettes, and even the central idea itself loses cohesion. The Big Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels lik…

It definitely needed an editor to help them polish it up. It's funny though, I read it a year or two ago while I was in the middle of I Am A Strange Loop by Hofstadter and I'm positive the author of TiNAD had just read IAASL when they wrote it...People essentially being memes explained through loss of a partner, Prokofiev making a conspicuous appearance, and strange loopiness in general. It was weird, like the author and I had just read the same book.
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