Blog 3rd Jan 2026 – There Is No Antimemetics Division I viscerally remember the first time I watched Bladerunner. What I think moved me most were the concepts the film encapsulated. The loneliness of a time limited machine, desperately trying to find its roots, creator and actually a justification for its very existence - all while being hunted. Roys' poignant moment on the rooftop (ad libbed by Rutger Hauer (RIP) because he felt the original script was just too wordy) captured something remarkably profound and still resonates today. I am not affiliated in any way with a company named after a rain forest, but I do use their readers - and about a month ago I spotted a book with an interesting name and visually interesting cover (I didn't know anything else about it). As often happens with modern selling algorithms, the book kept popping up every time I visited the site. Eventually my curiosity got the better of me.
There Is No Antimemetics Division Book Cover
Written by Sam Hughes under the pseudo name of QNTM it is a wonderfully original book filed with unusual ideas carefully crafted into what became a deeply enjoyable story. (Sam is a software engineer. After visiting his web site I found myself warming to him after reading his observations on horribly sloppy code in his posting that string concatenation frisson). In this book, the world we inhabit is filled with predatory entities capable of perception control and manipulation of our memory - memetics. An organisation has been established to counter these and where possible confine and control them - given that many of these entities are highly dangerous. The entities are often difficult to quantify - which is why they're called unknowns and designated a number in the form U-xxxx. These things inhabit a kind of twilight space between us and reality, mainly because they can control our ability to see and remember them... so their control is real but while some of them may be neutral, occasionally resembling pets, others are the very personification of pure evil itself. Given the way memory can be deceived by these unknowns, even the people busily working inside the organisation can and do forget why it exists and what purpose it serves. They'll ask with incredulity, unknown... what unknown? Don't be silly, there is no antimemetics division.
One of the unknowns we encounter early on is U-0055 - which has been sealed into a secure cubic cell. People can freely visit U-0055. They can see it, interact with it, take pictures, draw sketches and write notes. But after they leave the cell, their memories will become fuzzy. Knowledge of what they see will leak out of their minds. Someone asked to describe U-0055 will find their mind wondering and will very deliberately move to other tasks. Any written notes will turn out be gibberish (both to others and themselves). The cell itself is housed in a larger secure building but even though access to U-0055 is unrestricted, the staff in that secure installation will still (when questioned) routinely deny all knowledge of the presence of the unknown - but the kicker is that whoever originally put U-0055 in the cell, is now also unknown. Whatever reasoning or objectives they may have had to construct the U-0055 cell in the first place, is long gone... irretrievably lost in the past. The difficulty of fighting something possessing memetic memory altering capabilities is overwhelming. What can you do if you simply can't remember - and even if you can jump that memory hurdle, would it be possible to hand knowledge reliably to future generations? The cell holding U-0055 being just one of many strategies and controls that have long since been lost. This dilemma brought to mind a line in a song by Mike Posner, I get along with old timers, cos their name's a reminder of a pop song people forgot. Quite so. From the start we're introduced to the pure and remarkably noble character Marie Quinn, tasked with the job of straightening out a manager unaware that they have been captured and compromised. They have no recollection, no understanding of how they drifted from their core task but during the process an unknown infiltrated their office as a personal secretary. Even though the unknown is both out of place, doesn't possess the correct security pass and in all regards appears wrong / out-of-place, the manager can't see the problem nor that a problem even exists. Hughes book is full of original thinking - with parallels galore and I particularly enjoyed the surgical precision he used to dig deep into that vein. I devoured this book over the last week but won't lie... some of the implications of memory alteration within the story line can be quite difficult to follow. Without a hint of irony I plan to read it again. But dear lord, I really do miss the unknown that everyone called Sunshine. Comment | Back to Quick Links...