Books book reviews You Will Not Remember This Review—qntm’s There Is No Anti-Memetics Division A novel to read—and not forget. By Sasha Bonkowsky | Published on December 10, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Ref.: U-11125 | Cat.: 1 Containment Protocol: U-11125 is kept on a bookshelf in vault Q1 in the Passive Containment Archive housed at UO Wyeleigh. Due to the large quantity of information receptacles and other text-based Unknowns, vault Q1 must be checked monthly for seepage or plagiarism. Organization staff of rank L or higher are free to select and examine U-11125 outside of these inspections, provided that their supervisor of rank I or higher provides written authorization through form 25.A(2) to do so. Although presented as fiction, U-11125 nevertheless contains variations on classified information about the Organization and its past missions—obtained through the aforementioned ‘seepage’ that defines book-type Unknowns—that staff are not pre-approved to know. Amnestic measures are permitted in the event these protocols are disregarded. Description: U-11125 takes the form of a slim novel. The cover depicts a heavy stone monolith, several stories in height, rising above a fog-covered forest composed of subtle greens, grey, and oranges. The title, in reflective silver text, reads “There Is No Anti-Memetics Division”; below that, U-11125 declares itself to be “A Novel By QNTM”. (note: Investigate? Possibly a propagating source of several Unknowns.) There Is No Anti-Memetics Division depicts an Organization much like our own, dedicated to protecting humanity from incursions, creatures, or phenomena acting outside of known science or reality. In recent years, especially with the rise of the Internet and ever more mass media phenomena, the Organization’s Memetics Division—tracking Unknowns with the power to self-replicate through culture and information—has grown rapidly. But that’s not where our protagonist, Marie Quinn, works. She heads the understaffed and struggling Anti-Memetics Division. It’s not the best working environment. Anti-memetics are ideas that cannot be spread, entities that consume and destroy information. They can make people forget them the moment they look away, corrupt and mutate any records. They can kill you by crushing your mind and then, once you’re dead, no one will ever remember you existed. Against that, what can the Division do? They’ve got special serums made to crystallize memories and make them more resistant to anti-memetic entities, records and vaults isolated from incursion so that field agents can be brought back to speed on whatever they’ve forgotten, but mostly they’ve got to rely on their own wisdom and bravery. Simon Lee is a new researcher at the Organization, who finds himself under attack in the cafeteria by an Unknown, U-7175: First, 7175 cuts its victims out of bystanders’ memories so they can’t help him, then slowly feeds on every bit of information in its victims’ brains until they collapse. Although panicked, Lee is able to escape to a basement lab, find the last testimonies of all those attacked (and killed) by 7175 previously, and defeat it using a hard drive as a weapon—an overload of information that burns 7175 to nothing. During his debriefing with Quinn, Lee learns that he’s done this all many times before. In fact, he’s been working in the Anti-Memetics Division for over ten years, even if he’ll never remember it. Quinn is blasé: People in the Division are as competent on Day One as they’ll ever be. The rest is just fine-tuning the meds. It’s a strange, static existence for the Division, existing in the eternal present. But, at the edges of their collective memory, something is going wrong. Something is trying to break through. Anti-memetic incursions are getting stronger, and every month the Division has fewer and fewer staff to deal with them. Readers of the book Unknown can track Quinn’s reports through the chapters: 200 staff, 90 staff, 30; but Quinn herself, recollections constantly rewritten, has no idea her people are being picked off. Written badly, There Is No Anti-Memetics Division could be deeply, deeply frustrating. The memory-erasing nature of its monsters mean the characters often have no idea what’s going on; crucial information is revealed, but before Quinn or Lee can act on it it’s wiped from their brains. “No!” you want to shout at them. “You were so close! Don’t turn away—don’t look away—don’t forget!” They do, in the end. Serums and training can only go so far. But they try. The key that keeps Anti-Memetics Division gripping, that makes you cheer and weep for these poor beleaguered civil servants, is that it’s not a book about people forgetting the enemies and making bad decisions. It’s a book about people under siege by a vast, literally unknowable alien force, constantly two steps behind, who are nevertheless skilled, clever, and determined enough to go—almost—toe-to-toe with it. We cheer the Division’s successes, rather than mourn its failures. There Is No Anti-Memetics Division isn’t alone as it tackles memory, minds, and individualism. A large strain of modern sci-fi is interested in the same, perhaps due to the rise of LLMs designed to remember everything but have no set personality. (note: if Unknowns are in cultural conversation with exterior media, does this mean the Passive Containment Archive is improperly sealed? Check with the Memetics Division.) There’s Severance, with its in/out memory partition, and then the hive minds of Pluribus, the Imperial Radch series, and Locklands, the latter of which are curious about what happens to people as they gain others’ memories, rather than have their own taken away. As your mind is altered—as it’s dissected or expanded—are you still the same person? Much of this sci-fi says no: Our personal experiences and feelings, and the way we carry them forwards, are what defines us. Mark Scout, with only memories from outside Lumon, is meaningfully different from Mark S. in wants, outlook, and morals; the emergent consciousness of Lockland’s hive mind, or the Radch’s ships, are something else than what’s put into them. Anti-Memetics Division, however, takes the opposite stance. “The first thing [an Unknown] did when it saw me,” Quinn explains to her reflection, “was eat everything I knew about the Division, and about it. If I had a plan, it ate the plan. But I’m still me. So I can come up with that plan again. It’s already right in front of me, I just need to see it. If I were me, what would my plan have been?” Being an agent of the Division relies on the fact that you’ll be the same person no matter your mind, that Unknowns can scoop out the memories but not the grooves they fill. Recommendations For Future Study: There Is No Anti-Memetics Division threads the needle to perfection of making readers care about its characters even as it unravels their minds and personalities; it’s a gripping, thrilling cosmic horror. Members of the Organization looking to advance their careers or discover the depths of the threats faced are well-advised to read it. Read it, and don’t forget it. [The preceding information is classified under the Organization’s Founding Charter, Article C, §10.8.] [end-mark] The post You Will Not Remember This Review—qntm’s <i>There Is No Anti-Memetics Division</i> appeared first on Reactor.