There is No Antimemetics Division (2025) by QNTM

 Book Review

There is No Antimemetics Division (2025)

 by QNTM

    I happened across this title perusing the shelves at a Burlington, Vermont bookstore, where it had one of those handwritten "employee recommends" cards attached.  I don't know about you, but I always take the time to read these- whether it's a Barnes & Noble or what, because I think you can really tell about a specific Bookstore based on whether the employees can identify books that I a) don't know about and b) want to read.    There is No Antiemetics Division jumped out to me on a couple levels, first, what the employee wrote on the card was interesting. Second, it was clearly a horror-science-fiction genre title that was placed in the wider "new releases" shelf at the front of the store, that shows me the book or author already has escape velocity from the genre shelf.  Last, the cover promised "cosmic horror" AKA Lovecraftian horror without the not-so-subtle racism.  

  You can describe the plot easily enough, a secret government agency labors against the horrors of the unknown, but that doesn't do the material justice.  Specifically, it doesn't describe the role that memory plays in the horror aspect of the plot, thought there is also non-memory based actual horror along Lovecraftian lines. Unlike most first gen cosmic horror, QNTM (a nom de plume for an English author/programmer Sam Hughes), does describe said horror, rectifying a major issue with that genre (how long can an author keep describing a nameless, unknowable horror without actually describing said horror.). 

  I found There is No Antimemetics Division really mind-blowing in the way of most great genre fiction.  The fusion of memory-language sci-fi and cosmic horror was revelatory in a way similar to the initial Matrix movie- genre but transcendent, classic genre.   Worth reading for sure.