The book "There is no antimemetics division" is about the team fighting an SCP antimeme. It's a really fun read and a bit of a mindf*. I strongly recommend it.
Unfortunately it's no longer for sale. IIRC the writer has gotten a book deal for it, and the existing self-published version was removed from sale while the new version is being edited. According to Amazon the new revision is up for pre-order and will be available on November 11th.
My favorite one from qntm is probably Miguel Acevedo [1]. It is pretty spot on wrt. several topics related to the current AI boom ; for instance the licensing topic.
I'll wait for the re-release regardless. No need to jump through any hoops to get it on my Kindle plus the author gets paid for their work. Plus, I imagine it'll benefit from the work of an editor.
You may want to read both, they are going to be pretty different. For starters, AIUI the new published version is not going to be an SCP story, probably because of rights issues. I assume it will be "SCP with the serial numbers filed off", but we won't know for sure until it comes out. I'd read the existing one and then decide if you like it enough that you want to preorder the new one.
“SCP is the the serial numbers filed off” is sort of a funny concept. Conventionally each SCP story is considered to exist within its own canon and the author is able to pick-and-choose which other stories “exist” from its point of view, right? So there are n SCP continuities, and after the book is published there will be n+1, but that +1 is special for copyright reasons, haha.
SCP is CC-SA-BY anyway, so you can download it from torrent, modify it, resell it, if you want to[0]. It's basically GPL, so you can do that with anything that has any relation to an SCP (derivative of a derivative of a derivative)
The author's page links to the original SCP Wiki page, where you can read it in parts, as it was being created. It's not a straight book download, but you can think of each red link as a chapter.
Which link? Because the one I posted works, and it says:
> Suggested reading order is from top to bottom. For those wishing to read the book There Is No Antimemetics Division, begin with "SCP-055" and finish with "Champions of Nothing."
Checked every one of those links, which also work. I can't understand why are you... wait, what were we talking about?
For those who didn't notice or didn't scroll far enough, there's a link at the bottom of SCP-55 that leads to several pages worth of extra fiction by qntm, constituting a prelude or introduction of sorts to "There is no antimemetics division".
Suppose there are two distinct entities, each such that if it is learned about, then it kills the learner, call them Geigh and Ritaar. What happens when Geigh learns about Ritaar?
IMHO it reads a bit too much like a Rick & Morty episode, the characters lack depth and it keeps pushing ever extremer events without taking the time to establish a baseline of normalcy.
The 'anti-memetic antagonist' idea is interesting, but that seems to be the only idea that's in there - the constant amnesia get's old quick and it tears reality apart way too quickly to still care.
Eh it starts off good, but then it delves too much into the love story between some scientist and her partner and then goes on a wild tangent related to forgotten members still existing as ghosts in the system.
It makes the same mistake Steven King did when writing the Dark Tower; it over-explains the mystery and intrigue that made the initial story (The Gunslinger) so compelling, and leans too much on its characters to carry the story.
I say the same thing about the SCP antimeme, as I say to Dark Tower readers: Read the first story, skip the rest or treat them as unrelated fanfics.
I thought the ghosts were the strongest part because it showed the story had the confidence to continue introducing new crazier ideas, and that one was particularly crazy but still fit into the SCP world. Sort of like why people liked Three Body Problem.
The weakest parts are when it focuses too much on the antagonist, where it tends to forget the actual definition of 3125 and just makes it something/someone that causes the world to end in random wacky crazy ways.
When it gets post-apocalyptic the writing also tends to forget how travel times and geography work. (Pretty common problem with old SF, where you'd go to a "planet" and there are like, 3 people who live on the planet. In this case the remaining living protagonist somehow manages to walk between very far places on his own without needing food and such.)
I disagree, this whole new plane of existence (basically heaven) was introduced out of nothing, without anything previously in the book hinting that something like that exists in this universe.
Tbh it felt like the author had written himself into a corner and made this up ad-hoc as a way to keep the story going.
It felt like a tie-in to some other thread in SCP canon, TBH. It's a pretty chaotic mix of ideas and stories, so it's something that fits but might have well been written by someone else in some other part of the wiki (chasing all of these is a time sink and a half, almost as bad as tvtropes)
I'd say (agree?) that the 2nd half (roughly) of the book is much worse but IMO still worth reading the whole thing. The concept is really novel (at least it was for me) and so engaging with it can still be fun.
It feels like overly forced sequel. "Your Last First Day" have definite ending, but then "Five Five Five Five Five" brings ghosts in order to have story with happy-end.
The new version is removing the SCP universe integration, so I assume the subplot with the ghosts (a crossover with another SCP story during serialization) will be changed.
The SCP universe is what made the antimemetics so unique though - that you had an entire forgotten department, doing heavy lifting Slow Horses style, keeping the whole operation running.
It's important because SCP is important, i.e. it borrows its greatness from the success of the normal day-to-day SCP operations.
Without it, it's just a story about amnesia at a government facility, and those kind of books are a dime a dozen.
