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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]

#61

Post by wishfish »

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 with the book became a bit meta. I greatly enjoyed the first half or so of it. Though it did start to feel a little repetitive after a while. But I couldn't get past the first half because all the black line "redactions" started making my Kindle unstable. First time I've seen an ebook's formatting crash the device.

Eventually gave up because of the constant slowdowns and crashes. Which in many ways fit the book. I liked thinking the data within was so dangerous and alien that my Kindle could not handle it. I know this wasn't intentional by the author but still, it was a nice metafictional touch.

I suppose a future horror novelist could replicate this intentionally. A creepy combination of symbols guaranteed to overwhelm a limited memory ereader. Coming at the right point in the story, it could be effective. Though it would also lead to a ton of 1-star reviews.

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

#62

Post by Brian_K_White »

rototrav wrote: post #57
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?

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.

I loved Jennifer Government (Max Barry) wayyyy back.

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

#63

Post by argomo »

jodrellblank wrote: post #54
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

What a coincidence. I also read the book and can't recall what it was about. Umm, what were we talking about again?

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

#64

Post by cousin_it »

jerf wrote: post #42
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 Bad Thing has so many manifestations that it feels like monster of the week rather than a true full book that holds onto a core sharply executed identity." This is one of the structural weaknesses in the entire SCP... motif, for lack of a better word. When a core part of the premise is "you can't understand it, not even in principle, if you think you understand it you're wrong", the premise does some fairly…

I agree sci-fi is an outlier on this, but I also think all stories compete on setting to some extent. Fantasy most obviously (Tolkien, JK Rowling). But also for example the Jazz Age setting of The Great Gatsby contributed a lot to the novel's popularity and was a bit fictionalized, hard boiled detective writers like Hammett or Chandler wrote about a crime-filled world that was fictionalized for appeal, historical romances about lords and ladies are super fictionalized and so on. Writers try to put appeal into everything, that's why they're writers.

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

#65

Post by roadside_picnic »

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?

I'm a pretty big fan of Roadside Picnic!

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

#66

Post by redfloatplane »

presbyterian wrote: post #55
redfloatplane wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks, that’s the answer I was looking for!

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

#67

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Nition wrote: post #10
coldtea wrote: post #9

Did anybody else find the original story mediocre stuff? Interesting premise, but neither novel nor that deep. PKD has done 100x with much less.

I really liked it and all the little interesting ideas within it, like the antimimetic worms that live everywhere. I actually found it very creative and clever. However, I didn't think the recent rewrite was as much of an improvement as others seem to. The later parts were improved but I thought some of the padding out of earlier parts arguably came out worse. --- Edit: To give an actual example, Marion's description…

I liked it for the interesting ideas within it. My favorite part of a story is the worldbuilding, the author's unique take on an idea, the special ways that different characters think and act. There's not a great deal of artistry I require in the introduction of a 49-year-old greying woman deep in some giant bureaucracy to imagine how other people relate to her, I'm interested more in the idea of a bureaucracy that deals with antimemes.

Perhaps that comes from reading too many online stories - including the whole of qntm's site [1], including the rough drafts. The quality of the editing, prose, or dialog isn't that important to me if the quality of the worldbuilding and the concepts are high enough.

https://qntm.org/fiction

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

#68

Post by floren »

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?

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

Player Piano by Vonnegut

Dune

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

#69

Post by jrussino »

jodrellblank wrote: post #54
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

> 2024 (before it was cool!)

The original draft of the first part "We Need To Talk About Fifty-Five" was posted to scp-wiki in 2015, and the SCP-055 entry dates back to 2008!

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/qntm-s-author-page

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub

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