I dislike the ending, at least of v2. In it, the author basically gives a fleshed out (christian, neoplatonist) metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.
I don't think this is much of a spoiler: in Ra (same author) you get just what you're looking for and, ironically, that's with another revised ending. Even with the christianic subtext, which is at times manifest. I've read both and the writing is overall superior. As it should be, antimemetics is his first work I think? Writers have historically become good from mere practise.
It's the strongest possible memetic weapon humans would have - I think it's entirely consistent with the meta-nature of the book, especially the self-conscious part.
If the take is religion is itself the weapon and the depiction given is mere evidence of that, OK, that's at least avoids the ending being totally awful. HOWEVER
The book spends much of its time saying the transcendent cannot even be represented, to people, to us the read -- then just represents it, and in a tawdry christian way.
I think the violation of that norm, as well as the ending being played straight -- with literally a long paragraph explaining with ideaspace is... that's a fourth-wall break into christianity imv
Which makes the whole book read as, "the issue with humans is our physical bodies in a fallen world which are limited. just die, go to heaven, then you can know/represent/understand everything. Yay! Death!"
OK. Just kinda naff.
It reads as a religious person who accidentally wrote a good sci-fi book then hurridly, at the end, reminds us all that its really a parable with a Noble Message that in Death all things are trascended.
I read the book and at no time did I think "Christianity". It seems like motivated reasoning on your part. At no time did the book ever preach, or was even moralistic.
I'm referring to the ending of the published version, which is quite different than v1, which ends abburptly, in particular the sections before and after:
> “She steps back from him. She flexes what could be wings.”
> “In ideatic space everything is possible and everything is real and every metaphor is apt. She sees a galaxy of shining points: people, all the people who have ever existed, packed almost densely enough to form a continuum, living and dead, real and fictional and borderline. Similar people, who think in similar ways and who stand for similar things, are closer together. Significant people, the famous and iconic, are brighter. There are stars for inanimate entities, too, and events and abstracts: countries, homes, works of art, births and first steps and words, shocks and dramas, archetypes, numbers and equations, long arcs of stories, grand mythologies, philosophies, politics, tropes. Every truth and lie is here. Ideatic space itself—the human conception of it, at least—is here too, a fixed point embedded inside itself. The idea of the Unknown Organization is here. The idea of Adam Quinn is here. Marie, rising, waking, is here. And occupying the same space as the first brilliant spiral is a second, its counterpart, a galaxy whose points are relationships between the points of the first: what each person means to each other person. Loves, mutual and unrequited; admirations, aspirations, intimidations, fears, and revulsions. Conceptions and misconceptions. There is Adam’s shining link with Marie, and Marie’s link back to Adam. And Marie’s link to the Organization. And at the core of the whole dazzling ecosystem is an ultimate singular point, to which every other point is connected: humanity.
> And the whole thing, the entirety of human ideatic space, is being torn apart. U-3125 hangs above it, a monumental, blinding new presence, a singular entity more massive and luminous than both spirals combined. Its malevolent gravity drags humanity and all human ideas into its orbit, warping them beyond recognition. Beneath it, within its context, everything becomes corrupted into the worst version of itself. It takes joy and turns it into vindictive glee; it takes self-reliance and turns it into solipsistic psychosis; it turns love into smothering assault, pride into humiliation, families into traps, safety into paranoia, peace into discontent. It turns people into people who do not see people as people. And civilizations, ultimately, into abominations.
> U-3125 is titanic in its structure, brain-breaking in its topology. It comes from another part of ideatic space, a place where ideas exist on a scale entirely beyond those of humans. Its wrongness and[…]”
> “She sets a course. Outbound, to the deepest limit of ideatic space.”
Etc. The references to U3125 incarnating, and it being The Adversary. And the explicit ascention narrative with Mary getting wings, flying thru clouds of Ideas -- which are actually animate and incarnated in this world, ie., they are souls. I mean, it's terribly misjudged ending
> metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.
FWIW, this just seems to be what’s popular now. Pretty regularly now, I’ll see social media posts and memes mocking [media franchise X] for being anything other than that very basic good vs evil plot with clean resolution, as if these people didn’t have plenty of Marvel slop to consume.
I will say this is tangential to the culture war, but seems to exist outside of it too.
Why would you disagree with the parent post and then fail to provide the title of the book in your own response? Just give the name of the book, please.
I tried making this joke to the author when the book was released ("I purchased the book, but the link just took me to an empty page") and, unfortunately, they didn't get it and tried to give me customer support
I loved the Southern Reach trilogy but didn't finish TINAD. I thought the premise was pushed too far and that less would've been more. OTOH the atmosphere of oppressive bureaucracy of Authority is still one my all time favorite scifi reads.
The core conceit lent itself so well to a (subverted) introductory "As you know" chapter that I didn't even notice it until I'd read it. Bravo for that alone.
That said, from the review: "open source maintainership as cosmic horror." Genuine laugh.
This review is just a plot synopsis. There are no quotes from the book to give me a sense of the quality of the writing. The review feels targeted at somebody who is already bought into the premise, not somebody from the outside who wants to know if "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is a good book or not. In that sense, it totally fails as a book review.
The review is also heavily LLM-inflected, to the point of being distracting.
GPTZero gives it a 100% chance of being AI generated, and I've found that these tools may give false negatives from a well-prompted model, but false positives are rare.
If you are looking to tune your intuition for AI-written text, here's an interesting list of their quirks (ironically provided as a Claude skill for removing those quirks from emitted text):
I have never read a review and got a true notion of whether the prose is good or not. Is that really why you read reviews? I thought this was a great review because it very concisely described what is an unorthodox book. If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book. It is a good book by the way.
Yes, I read reviews to learn if a book is good or not. Quotes from the book that are carefully selected often help to showcase what the author is capable of, on top of a clear description of their writing style. I want the reviewer to sell me on what moved them.
That is different than whether or not the reviewer was compelled by the ideas in the book. If the reviewer is a good writer, then I've learned something. Then, I know that somebody who is a good writer thought the ideas in a book were interesting, which by the transitive property, implies the author being reviewed is also a good writer. In this case, I don't think the reviewer is a very interesting writer, so I'm not convinced that they are a good judge of interesting writing.
It sounds like you're describing a summary (which does not deal with quality) rather than a review (which necessarily deals with quality). The posted writing seems to fall somewhere in between.
> If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book.
I don't read complete plot summaries of books that I ever plan to read. That's why I look for "reviews." The only reason it's hard to write a review is because you can't give away the plot, but you have to give a sense of the appeal and the quality of the book. Otherwise, it's just a summary.
I can't know what books are available on the market through introspection. The only way I can know about them is through being informed. I don't want to read a complete plot summary of a book I have yet to read. If the only way I can find out about the existence of books is by having the plot spoiled, that's not optimal.
edit: Also, tbh, if a book's plot is good, I don't need you to tell it to me. The person who came up with the plot already carefully came up with the way they wanted to tell it to me. Not sure why you think you can do better if you think the book is good. If the book is awful to read but the plot is interesting, feel free.
> It is a good book by the way.
The reason this doesn't work as a review is because I don't know you, and I don't know what you like. If you can say this in a way in which it doesn't matter whether I know you or what you like, and give away the least plot possible to accomplish this, you've written what most people are looking for in a review.
Agreed, and plot itself doesn't make a good book either. Some have very interesting plots but terrible prose and pacing while others are vice versa. Therefore a "review" that is merely a plot summary actually says nothing of the quality of the work.
If you say to just read the book then what's even the point of writing a review? I could say the same about any book which renders the advice meaningless.
I've noticed this too online and on YouTube, where "reviewers" conflate a plot summary with an actual review of the pros and cons and often deeper analysis of a work. These days I need to go to specific subreddits to get true reviews beyond surface level details, such as at r/TrueFilm.
I read whatever version of this book was available to download in 2020 and really enjoyed it. Some very original ideas. I didn't find the writing clunky, and I read way too much.
I read it in chunks from the wiki and feel the same. Maybe I'm not a discerning reader but it stayed in the front of my mind for a good few days after.
I just finished this book and complained about it the whole time. The prose is amateur and peppered with cliches (e.g. you should be fined for publishing the phrase "their suit was so sharp it could cut"). His attempt to write about the inner thoughts of the characters was pretty simple. The descriptions of violence and horror also felt child-like, especially the dialogue during those moments (e.g. Redd's introduction). The landscapes are bland, with lots of repetition. Personally, the redaction technique got boring fast when he would take up entire pages of the book to convey absent memories. He could use his words to convey this instead of black-boxes.
I will give the author credit on how they deal with their characters' memories and the re-development of their thoughts, and the usage of time-jumping was reasonable (some books jump around too much, as if these time-skips improve a boring plot). Also the convention for how they solve their dilemma was enjoyable.
Overall, I think the author relies too much on a vocal fandom around the SCP Foundation to glorify the book. I think there is potential for a saga of books but there needs to be more effort in the drafting and editing process to raise the quality of the books to the level the universe deserves.
It's surely not a great book and if you are someone who reads a book every few months i wouldn't recommend it. It's very weird and different and fun, though. I suggest it for people who read a lot of sci-fi and are looking for something that doesn't feel the same as 10 other books they've already read.
I'm smack dab in that "reads a book every few months" demographic, and also in that "people who work with formal systems for a living" demographic mentioned in this book review.
I would absolutely recommend it for people in the vicinity of these two demographics. It's worth it for the originality. Both the plot and the storytelling format are very weird and very original.
Yeah my take is the exact opposite. It's such a page turner that the book has become one of my default recommendations for people looking to get back into reading. Of course you have to be a certain type of nerd to appreciate it.
I wonder if this is for the rewrite or the first version.
I read the first version and thought the first half was good and that the second half felt clunky. To the point where i don’t recommend it to anyone (not a huge negative, there’s just better books out there).
The author’s other stories like Ra and Fine Structure have the same issue, in my opinion. He has interesting ideas, but cannot seem to write an ending.
This review appears to be of the first version despite the recent date. (The rewrite filed the serial numbers off the SCP references and changed character names both for copyright reasons and to provide a degree of separation from the original.)
I read both versions and agree that the second half of the first version was very abstract and difficult to follow. While I would consider the first half of the new version more edited than rewritten, the second half got a significant overhaul which fixed almost all of my issues with it and made for (in my opinion) a much more satisfying ending. I would recommend giving the new version another chance, though those who read the first version may find the new character names distracting. (Most didn't bother me, but Marion Wheeler -> Marie Quinn never felt quite right.)
Same!
I just finished the book a few days ago. The first half is really good, a cool premise and interesting story. The second half just got a bit too weird for me and by the final chapter I was happy it was finished lol.
They were being snarky about a comment when they literally didn't read the entire sentences they were being snarky about. No, I don't think I was unnecessarily harsh.
The first few chapters of that book are some of the coolest I've ever read. I agree it really drops off in the second half, but would still recommend it to people.
I think the dynamic pricing algo is on to us - I see $13.99 at Amazon and clicked on a Google Play Books link for $1.99 that then became $13.99 magically, same for Apple Books.
Please don't 'buy' digital items from Amazon, because you won't actually own them. Pay extra, support your local bookshop and get a physical copy which you will actually own.
I really appreciate that sentiment, but on the other hand 98% of the books I buy I won’t read a second time (because reading a new book will almost always trump rereading an old one), so I’m actually fine with not owning most of them, especially at $1.99 prices. The few that I deeply care about I buy a physical copy of.
It's a trade-off. I love the convenience of ebooks, but not owning my books is just categorically unacceptable to me. I want my daughter and anyone else coming after me to have free access to them, not to have to jump through Amazon's hoops (if such hoops even exist) for access.
I have a Kobo that I use to read the non-DRM ebooks I'm able to acquire. One such source is downloads from the Kobo store, when publishers make the non-DRM file available.
I use a kindle but I have never bought a book on the kindle store ever (been using it for 10 years). Totally doable and not hard to avoid... especially since the smaller stores not only have better sales but the author typically gets more money too.
They used to allow downloads of all books, which you could then rip the DRM from, but they got rid of that last year. Huge disappointment, and is why I don't buy books on Kindle anymore.
It's an enjoyable read, hopefully it's the start of a whole new arc in the series with more to come. My only real complaint is it's short and I want more. If you never read his other Interdependency series, it's also great.
TBH, the ending of Ra was a big letdown for me and though I like the small stories, I have the feeling that the author has issue building larger arcs. Still curious about this one and might read it just for the premise.
I listened to the Audible version and either I read a completely different book or the anti-memetic effects are real, because the main character in the article has a different name and the plot synopsis doesn’t seem to match up.
My short review would be: the book is very one-note, it’s like a horror movie that keeps doing the same jumpscare over and over again. Despite this I managed to enjoy it.
It's got some provocative ideas, which Stephen foregrounds.
It's got a great hook, and like most writing incubated under circumstances like this, it leans hard into polished sharp introduction into a well-considered world with a very specific flavor.
It's also—no better way to put it—crappy as a novel.
It's not because the author can't string sentences together.
It's because that's not what makes a novel function as a novel.
Epic opening and premise establishment: 10/10
Nice "plot twist", predictable in its inevitability if not its specifics; conforms to genre: 7/10
Narrative arc: 2/10
Ability to sustain meaningful tension and interest while working through the de rigeur mechanics of filling hundreds of pages: 1/10
I get that there is a new readership with different expectations and styles of reading. (Looking at you tiktok; looking at you Dungeon Crawler Carl; looking at most successful YA fiction especially that which gets SPICEY and is released in 8-book series with a new volume every 11 months)
If you're silverback and relish long-form fiction as previously conceived: set expectations accordingly.
I am a "silverback" and have read all of the classics of the SciFi genre and I loved this novel. An unconventional topic like this isn't going to fit all of the norms of writing. I thought it was well written and I love his dialog. I'm looking forward to future work.
The book was good but I struggled to finish it. You as a reader are encouraged to read because the ideas are so good but then it becomes hard to endure through to whatever resolution was waiting. For those unfamiliar, it will feel something like Momento - you start to feel yourself changing as you work through it. Worth a go for anyone looking for something different.
I dislike the ending, at least of v2. In it, the author basically gives a fleshed out (christian, neoplatonist) metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.
I don't think this is much of a spoiler: in Ra (same author) you get just what you're looking for and, ironically, that's with another revised ending. Even with the christianic subtext, which is at times manifest. I've read both and the writing is overall superior. As it should be, antimemetics is his first work I think? Writers have historically become good from mere practise.
The last 2 chapters made me not want to recommend the book. I’m so divided about it because the book started of incredibly strong.
It's the strongest possible memetic weapon humans would have - I think it's entirely consistent with the meta-nature of the book, especially the self-conscious part.
If the take is religion is itself the weapon and the depiction given is mere evidence of that, OK, that's at least avoids the ending being totally awful. HOWEVER
The book spends much of its time saying the transcendent cannot even be represented, to people, to us the read -- then just represents it, and in a tawdry christian way.
I think the violation of that norm, as well as the ending being played straight -- with literally a long paragraph explaining with ideaspace is... that's a fourth-wall break into christianity imv
Which makes the whole book read as, "the issue with humans is our physical bodies in a fallen world which are limited. just die, go to heaven, then you can know/represent/understand everything. Yay! Death!"
OK. Just kinda naff.
It reads as a religious person who accidentally wrote a good sci-fi book then hurridly, at the end, reminds us all that its really a parable with a Noble Message that in Death all things are trascended.
I read the book and at no time did I think "Christianity". It seems like motivated reasoning on your part. At no time did the book ever preach, or was even moralistic.
I'm referring to the ending of the published version, which is quite different than v1, which ends abburptly, in particular the sections before and after:
> “She steps back from him. She flexes what could be wings.”
> “In ideatic space everything is possible and everything is real and every metaphor is apt. She sees a galaxy of shining points: people, all the people who have ever existed, packed almost densely enough to form a continuum, living and dead, real and fictional and borderline. Similar people, who think in similar ways and who stand for similar things, are closer together. Significant people, the famous and iconic, are brighter. There are stars for inanimate entities, too, and events and abstracts: countries, homes, works of art, births and first steps and words, shocks and dramas, archetypes, numbers and equations, long arcs of stories, grand mythologies, philosophies, politics, tropes. Every truth and lie is here. Ideatic space itself—the human conception of it, at least—is here too, a fixed point embedded inside itself. The idea of the Unknown Organization is here. The idea of Adam Quinn is here. Marie, rising, waking, is here. And occupying the same space as the first brilliant spiral is a second, its counterpart, a galaxy whose points are relationships between the points of the first: what each person means to each other person. Loves, mutual and unrequited; admirations, aspirations, intimidations, fears, and revulsions. Conceptions and misconceptions. There is Adam’s shining link with Marie, and Marie’s link back to Adam. And Marie’s link to the Organization. And at the core of the whole dazzling ecosystem is an ultimate singular point, to which every other point is connected: humanity.
> And the whole thing, the entirety of human ideatic space, is being torn apart. U-3125 hangs above it, a monumental, blinding new presence, a singular entity more massive and luminous than both spirals combined. Its malevolent gravity drags humanity and all human ideas into its orbit, warping them beyond recognition. Beneath it, within its context, everything becomes corrupted into the worst version of itself. It takes joy and turns it into vindictive glee; it takes self-reliance and turns it into solipsistic psychosis; it turns love into smothering assault, pride into humiliation, families into traps, safety into paranoia, peace into discontent. It turns people into people who do not see people as people. And civilizations, ultimately, into abominations.
> U-3125 is titanic in its structure, brain-breaking in its topology. It comes from another part of ideatic space, a place where ideas exist on a scale entirely beyond those of humans. Its wrongness and[…]”
> “She sets a course. Outbound, to the deepest limit of ideatic space.”
Etc. The references to U3125 incarnating, and it being The Adversary. And the explicit ascention narrative with Mary getting wings, flying thru clouds of Ideas -- which are actually animate and incarnated in this world, ie., they are souls. I mean, it's terribly misjudged ending
Is this book just riffing about embedding space? I thought about reading it eventually, but the quoted passage is kind of annoying/tedious
No, it really just gets like that at the end which is what this chain has been going over.
> metaphysics to the world he's created which basically amounts to: heaven exists, humans win against the devil, etc. And the ending itself is a self-conscious version of an ascension narrative. It's a very 90deg turn ending to a book otherwise more interested in a world in which heaven is never accessible.
FWIW, this just seems to be what’s popular now. Pretty regularly now, I’ll see social media posts and memes mocking [media franchise X] for being anything other than that very basic good vs evil plot with clean resolution, as if these people didn’t have plenty of Marvel slop to consume.
I will say this is tangential to the culture war, but seems to exist outside of it too.
This article says “Book Review:” but then doesn’t provide the title of a book. I’m confused.
:)
It's in the title: "There is no Antimemetics Division" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54870256-there-is-no-ant...
What title?
Why would you disagree with the parent post and then fail to provide the title of the book in your own response? Just give the name of the book, please.
What book? There is no book discussed in this article
What article? This is an HN-only discussion post.
I tried making this joke to the author when the book was released ("I purchased the book, but the link just took me to an empty page") and, unfortunately, they didn't get it and tried to give me customer support
Whoa, you mean bringing terminally online memes into the real world is awkward and cringe? How unexpected
What are you talking about? Did you perhaps cross-post by accident to the wrong thread?
I suppose this joke only works when you've read it. I should take my meds, else I'll forget.
Just took mine. Please take proper quarantine measures when reading back these comments then, or you'll put us all at risk.
What article?
You can read the original here https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub
There is also the rough draft. I've only read the wiki and the first draft of book
Oddly I gifted the actual book away before reading it (I can buy it again, I thought)
I liked this one a lot. If you like weird fiction and enjoyed Jeff Vandermeer's Annhilation, there's a good chance you'll like this.
If you don't like weird fiction, odds are you'll bounce off it.
I loved the Southern Reach trilogy but didn't finish TINAD. I thought the premise was pushed too far and that less would've been more. OTOH the atmosphere of oppressive bureaucracy of Authority is still one my all time favorite scifi reads.
The core conceit lent itself so well to a (subverted) introductory "As you know" chapter that I didn't even notice it until I'd read it. Bravo for that alone.
That said, from the review: "open source maintainership as cosmic horror." Genuine laugh.
This review is just a plot synopsis. There are no quotes from the book to give me a sense of the quality of the writing. The review feels targeted at somebody who is already bought into the premise, not somebody from the outside who wants to know if "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is a good book or not. In that sense, it totally fails as a book review.
The review is also heavily LLM-inflected, to the point of being distracting.
GPTZero gives it a 100% chance of being AI generated, and I've found that these tools may give false negatives from a well-prompted model, but false positives are rare.
If you are looking to tune your intuition for AI-written text, here's an interesting list of their quirks (ironically provided as a Claude skill for removing those quirks from emitted text):
https://github.com/stephenturner/skill-deslop/blob/main/refe...
I have never read a review and got a true notion of whether the prose is good or not. Is that really why you read reviews? I thought this was a great review because it very concisely described what is an unorthodox book. If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book. It is a good book by the way.
Yes, I read reviews to learn if a book is good or not. Quotes from the book that are carefully selected often help to showcase what the author is capable of, on top of a clear description of their writing style. I want the reviewer to sell me on what moved them.
That is different than whether or not the reviewer was compelled by the ideas in the book. If the reviewer is a good writer, then I've learned something. Then, I know that somebody who is a good writer thought the ideas in a book were interesting, which by the transitive property, implies the author being reviewed is also a good writer. In this case, I don't think the reviewer is a very interesting writer, so I'm not convinced that they are a good judge of interesting writing.
It sounds like you're describing a summary (which does not deal with quality) rather than a review (which necessarily deals with quality). The posted writing seems to fall somewhere in between.
> If you want to see if the prose is any good, read the book.
I don't read complete plot summaries of books that I ever plan to read. That's why I look for "reviews." The only reason it's hard to write a review is because you can't give away the plot, but you have to give a sense of the appeal and the quality of the book. Otherwise, it's just a summary.
I can't know what books are available on the market through introspection. The only way I can know about them is through being informed. I don't want to read a complete plot summary of a book I have yet to read. If the only way I can find out about the existence of books is by having the plot spoiled, that's not optimal.
edit: Also, tbh, if a book's plot is good, I don't need you to tell it to me. The person who came up with the plot already carefully came up with the way they wanted to tell it to me. Not sure why you think you can do better if you think the book is good. If the book is awful to read but the plot is interesting, feel free.
> It is a good book by the way.
The reason this doesn't work as a review is because I don't know you, and I don't know what you like. If you can say this in a way in which it doesn't matter whether I know you or what you like, and give away the least plot possible to accomplish this, you've written what most people are looking for in a review.
Agreed, and plot itself doesn't make a good book either. Some have very interesting plots but terrible prose and pacing while others are vice versa. Therefore a "review" that is merely a plot summary actually says nothing of the quality of the work.
If you say to just read the book then what's even the point of writing a review? I could say the same about any book which renders the advice meaningless.
I've noticed this too online and on YouTube, where "reviewers" conflate a plot summary with an actual review of the pros and cons and often deeper analysis of a work. These days I need to go to specific subreddits to get true reviews beyond surface level details, such as at r/TrueFilm.
It's not a well-written book. It's an interesting book (more like a story).
Oh no, a book that tells a story.
I read whatever version of this book was available to download in 2020 and really enjoyed it. Some very original ideas. I didn't find the writing clunky, and I read way too much.
I read it in chunks from the wiki and feel the same. Maybe I'm not a discerning reader but it stayed in the front of my mind for a good few days after.
24 days ago: Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363133
There's also a short web series which is very good: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3ywOKVBeAp1CmOhpsfu...
I haven't seen the short film, so cannot compare.
Really didn't like this adaptation.
I just finished this book and complained about it the whole time. The prose is amateur and peppered with cliches (e.g. you should be fined for publishing the phrase "their suit was so sharp it could cut"). His attempt to write about the inner thoughts of the characters was pretty simple. The descriptions of violence and horror also felt child-like, especially the dialogue during those moments (e.g. Redd's introduction). The landscapes are bland, with lots of repetition. Personally, the redaction technique got boring fast when he would take up entire pages of the book to convey absent memories. He could use his words to convey this instead of black-boxes.
I will give the author credit on how they deal with their characters' memories and the re-development of their thoughts, and the usage of time-jumping was reasonable (some books jump around too much, as if these time-skips improve a boring plot). Also the convention for how they solve their dilemma was enjoyable.
Overall, I think the author relies too much on a vocal fandom around the SCP Foundation to glorify the book. I think there is potential for a saga of books but there needs to be more effort in the drafting and editing process to raise the quality of the books to the level the universe deserves.
It's surely not a great book and if you are someone who reads a book every few months i wouldn't recommend it. It's very weird and different and fun, though. I suggest it for people who read a lot of sci-fi and are looking for something that doesn't feel the same as 10 other books they've already read.
I'm smack dab in that "reads a book every few months" demographic, and also in that "people who work with formal systems for a living" demographic mentioned in this book review.
I would absolutely recommend it for people in the vicinity of these two demographics. It's worth it for the originality. Both the plot and the storytelling format are very weird and very original.
Yeah my take is the exact opposite. It's such a page turner that the book has become one of my default recommendations for people looking to get back into reading. Of course you have to be a certain type of nerd to appreciate it.
I wonder if this is for the rewrite or the first version.
I read the first version and thought the first half was good and that the second half felt clunky. To the point where i don’t recommend it to anyone (not a huge negative, there’s just better books out there).
It seems to be for the first version, judging by the use of the original names, which is odd because the review's from this year.
The rewrite definitely improves on the ending and its delivery, but it's still largely the same plot, so it may not address all of your issues.
The author’s other stories like Ra and Fine Structure have the same issue, in my opinion. He has interesting ideas, but cannot seem to write an ending.
This review appears to be of the first version despite the recent date. (The rewrite filed the serial numbers off the SCP references and changed character names both for copyright reasons and to provide a degree of separation from the original.)
I read both versions and agree that the second half of the first version was very abstract and difficult to follow. While I would consider the first half of the new version more edited than rewritten, the second half got a significant overhaul which fixed almost all of my issues with it and made for (in my opinion) a much more satisfying ending. I would recommend giving the new version another chance, though those who read the first version may find the new character names distracting. (Most didn't bother me, but Marion Wheeler -> Marie Quinn never felt quite right.)
The article says:
"And at the top of the food chain sits SCP-3125 (renamed in the published edition, but the designation is so perfect I am using it anyway) ..."
I had the opposite reaction. The second half was garbage, but the first half was so good and original I'd recommend it just for that.
Same! I just finished the book a few days ago. The first half is really good, a cool premise and interesting story. The second half just got a bit too weird for me and by the final chapter I was happy it was finished lol.
I liked piecing the story together in the SCP wiki.
Later I read the first version of the book and it was okay, but the vibes were a bit lost.
The new version of the book I didn't even finish.
> the first half was good and that the second half felt clunky
> The second half was garbage, but the first half was so good
so you had the same reaction?
> To the point where i don’t recommend it to anyone
> but the first half was so good and original I'd recommend it just for that
Attension span so short you couldn't even make it to the second half of the sentence before dismissing it
I think this comment is unnecessarily harsh.
To anyone confused (like me), the commenters above had opposite recommendations despite having similar opinions of the book.
They were being snarky about a comment when they literally didn't read the entire sentences they were being snarky about. No, I don't think I was unnecessarily harsh.
fair enough, i guess my brain got stuck on reconciling the first thing that i whiffed on the differing recommendations lol
The first few chapters of that book are some of the coolest I've ever read. I agree it really drops off in the second half, but would still recommend it to people.
The rewrite is excellent
Are there any real-life examples of antimemes? How would antimemes even propagate given that they'd "die out" immediately?
Maybe not exactly an antimeme, but my mind went to biology. Measles can destroy memory B-cells and T-cells, causing immunological amnesia.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002885
If they did, we wouldn't know. Those that do/did know would be dead.
Good timing, the Kindle version is $1.99 right now.
I think the dynamic pricing algo is on to us - I see $13.99 at Amazon and clicked on a Google Play Books link for $1.99 that then became $13.99 magically, same for Apple Books.
Please don't 'buy' digital items from Amazon, because you won't actually own them. Pay extra, support your local bookshop and get a physical copy which you will actually own.
I really appreciate that sentiment, but on the other hand 98% of the books I buy I won’t read a second time (because reading a new book will almost always trump rereading an old one), so I’m actually fine with not owning most of them, especially at $1.99 prices. The few that I deeply care about I buy a physical copy of.
I borrowed it from the library.
Support your local library!
This disregards the benefit of a single device that is easy to carry. Love where this is come from so maybe do both if you can.
It's a trade-off. I love the convenience of ebooks, but not owning my books is just categorically unacceptable to me. I want my daughter and anyone else coming after me to have free access to them, not to have to jump through Amazon's hoops (if such hoops even exist) for access.
I have a Kobo that I use to read the non-DRM ebooks I'm able to acquire. One such source is downloads from the Kobo store, when publishers make the non-DRM file available.
I use a kindle but I have never bought a book on the kindle store ever (been using it for 10 years). Totally doable and not hard to avoid... especially since the smaller stores not only have better sales but the author typically gets more money too.
I basically always start with digital, if the book is good I always buy a physical copy for my shelf.
I do something similar - but I'm quite picky with books I buy due to limited physical space.
Amazon allows EPUB downloads for publishers that have chosen to go DRM-free.
They used to allow downloads of all books, which you could then rip the DRM from, but they got rid of that last year. Huge disappointment, and is why I don't buy books on Kindle anymore.
First I'm hearing of that, is there an easy way to tell that's available?
It usually says somewhere in the description I think. E.g. this one (good series, btw): https://www.amazon.com/Shattering-Peace-Old-Mans-Book-ebook/...
> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Not sure how universal that is, but I've seen similar language on several other books.
Oh wow, that's hidden. Thanks.
Wait, OMW book 7? Wtf? Thank you even more! That'll be up next after my Hyperion re-read (RIP Dan)
It's an enjoyable read, hopefully it's the start of a whole new arc in the series with more to come. My only real complaint is it's short and I want more. If you never read his other Interdependency series, it's also great.
I think I read all of his series, yeah. Interdependency was great.
I'm more interested in rewarding utility because that gives me better things.
It was a great book, but this review of it have its own value.
Nice review; covers all the best points of the book, and its place in the world, without too many spoilers.
It’s a fun book. Definitely worth a read.
Crazy timing. My copy of this is being delivered today from the local bookshop. Great review.
TBH, the ending of Ra was a big letdown for me and though I like the small stories, I have the feeling that the author has issue building larger arcs. Still curious about this one and might read it just for the premise.
Writing good endings is hard.
I liked Ra, but I liked Fine Structures more.
Couldn't finish it. I suppose it was not for me.
Loved this book. Definitely a mind trip
I listened to the Audible version and either I read a completely different book or the anti-memetic effects are real, because the main character in the article has a different name and the plot synopsis doesn’t seem to match up.
My short review would be: the book is very one-note, it’s like a horror movie that keeps doing the same jumpscare over and over again. Despite this I managed to enjoy it.
Written by AI.
I read this.
It's got some provocative ideas, which Stephen foregrounds.
It's got a great hook, and like most writing incubated under circumstances like this, it leans hard into polished sharp introduction into a well-considered world with a very specific flavor.
It's also—no better way to put it—crappy as a novel.
It's not because the author can't string sentences together.
It's because that's not what makes a novel function as a novel.
Epic opening and premise establishment: 10/10
Nice "plot twist", predictable in its inevitability if not its specifics; conforms to genre: 7/10
Narrative arc: 2/10
Ability to sustain meaningful tension and interest while working through the de rigeur mechanics of filling hundreds of pages: 1/10
I get that there is a new readership with different expectations and styles of reading. (Looking at you tiktok; looking at you Dungeon Crawler Carl; looking at most successful YA fiction especially that which gets SPICEY and is released in 8-book series with a new volume every 11 months)
If you're silverback and relish long-form fiction as previously conceived: set expectations accordingly.
I am a "silverback" and have read all of the classics of the SciFi genre and I loved this novel. An unconventional topic like this isn't going to fit all of the norms of writing. I thought it was well written and I love his dialog. I'm looking forward to future work.
I have not read this book. I've been avoiding it for a while for the dumbest possible reason, which is that I only associate this book with SWE's.
It's worth a read, at least the first half, just because it's really fun.
Exactly what a SWE would say.
The book was good but I struggled to finish it. You as a reader are encouraged to read because the ideas are so good but then it becomes hard to endure through to whatever resolution was waiting. For those unfamiliar, it will feel something like Momento - you start to feel yourself changing as you work through it. Worth a go for anyone looking for something different.