Warning: This Book Has a Delayed Fuse

A review of qntm’s There Is No Antimemetics Division, a novel about ideas that defend themselves against being remembered

It has been a few days since I finished There Is No Antimemetics Division, and I still cannot work out what actually happened to me. Because this is one of those uncomfortable books. One of those that break the fourth wall, and one of those that make you start wondering whether the thing happening to the characters might also be happening to you. It is also one of those books that twist your brain until it aches. Except not right away.

There is no Antimemetics Division

You have heard of memes. No, not the funny pictures. I mean cultural, linguistic and informational memes. The original kind: units of information that spread between people the way viruses do.

The term comes from Richard Dawkins, who proposed it as a cultural counterpart to the gene.

A meme is the smallest piece of culture that can be copied from one mind to another without going through DNA. It lives in brains, sometimes also on paper or on servers, and it behaves the way any replicator behaves. It reproduces through imitation, it mutates, and it gets selected for or against.