A secret research organisation protects the world against existentially threatening “unknowns”, so that the public can continue their quotidian lives in blissful ignorance. Its Antimemetics Division specialises in anomalies that affect memory and perception; fighting and containing phenomena that cannot be directly recorded or observed.
The story begins episodically, introducing a succession of mind-altering unknowns, but we soon perceive the shape of a larger Lovecraftian incursion below the surface, an existential war that coalesces from the sum of the individual skirmishes.
The reader pieces this together, alongside the organisation, from epistolary fragments and nonlinear storytelling, creating a narrative that occasionally feels ergodic as portions of the text are redacted by the very unknowns we’re trying to comprehend.
At times the book displays a wry humour, echoing its Laundry Files lineage, with unknowns like “a rock that contains the telepathic god of forgetting how to ride a bicycle”. But this juvenile humour is a rare respite from what is a grim and despairing mashup of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Members of the organisation sacrifice everything to the cause, accepting their memories are unreliable, their history forfeit, their fragmented identities recursively photocopied into oblivion.
The war is a one step forwards, two back situation for a division that has a hard time remembering or recording, resulting in narrative trench warfare — a Memento-esque fog of confusion that permeates every decision as we observe the human consequences of a high-stakes game of Chinese whispers.
Emerging from the online writing collective of the SCP foundation, and following in the footsteps of many others — Fringe, X-files, MiB — the antimemetics focus opens up a uniquely fresh and captivating angle on this familiar trope. But it’s the tragic human elements of this story that elevate it from fun pulp to emotionally moving and thought-provoking. This is a book with depth for those prepared to overcome its challenging structure and knotted plotting.
