There Is No Antimemetics Division

Published in 2021, There is No Antimemetics Division is a science fiction/cosmic horror novel by qntm, the pen name of British author Sam Hughes. The novel evolved from qntm’s contributions to the online collaborative writing project SCP Wiki, which he wrote and published in serialized chapters in 2015. After he independently published the novel in 2021, Ballantine Books and Del Rey traditionally published it in 2025.

The novel focuses on an international research group known as the Unknown Organization, which studies and develops protective countermeasures against anomalous entities commonly referred to as Unknowns. Marie Quinn, chief of the Organization’s Antimemetics Division, discovers a threatening Unknown that dominates people’s minds once they think of it. Quinn races against both time and gaps in her own memory to stop this Unknown before it can destroy the world. The novel explores several themes, including The Limits of Censorship, The Human Costs of War, and Knowledge as a Form of Hope.

This study guide refers to the 2025 Kindle edition, published by Ballantine Books.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death, illness, physical and emotional abuse, self-harm, mental illness, substance use, and animal cruelty and death.

Plot Summary

An international research group known as the Unknown Organization (UO) devotes its resources to the study and containment of anomalous entities throughout the world. These entities are commonly referred to as Unknowns. The novel is largely set at UO facilities in the United Kingdom and Ireland (UKI) devoted to antimemetics, a field of research devoted to addressing gaps in memory. Their work suggests that certain Unknowns, or “antimemes,” seek to suppress or erase human memory. Throughout the first part of the novel, the Organization researches several Unknowns of this type.

Marie Quinn, the director of the Organization’s Antimemetics Division, briefs UKI Director Mahlo on the functions of her branch when he becomes convinced that she’s a fraud. However, while briefing Mahlo, Quinn neutralizes an Unknown that infiltrated Mahlo’s office, disguising itself as his assistant. Later, Quinn debriefs a research instructor named Simon Lee after he survives a dangerous encounter with an Unknown that feeds on the memories of its prey. In addition, the novel presents an archival file on the history of an Unknown called Cryptomorpha gigantes, which naturally suppresses any viewer’s ability to perceive and remember it and is currently believed to be extinct.

Quinn interviews Andrew Hilton, the founder of the Antimemetics Division, who promised upon his retirement that he would disclose crucial information before his death. When Quinn reverses his aging process, Hilton reveals that the Division undergoes a cyclical process of collapse and rebirth, which is necessary for it to prevent the outcome of total loss in the event of an antimemetic war. Before its current incarnation, the Division’s predecessor developed a memory bomb that would successfully erase all memories of its existence. Hilton also reveals the existence of a world-threatening Unknown that he calls “[t]he escapee,” an abstract entity that can dominate the mind of anyone who can conceptualize it. Hilton suggests that they might engage an unused memory bomb to delay the escapee’s spread through human consciousness, since no one knows any other way to contain or neutralize its threat. The escapee possesses Hilton himself, forcing Quinn to flee and erase her memory of the meeting.

Quinn looks for signs of the escapee’s existence in the Organization’s database, discovering ruins of older civilizations like a giant memorial to those who died in a previous antimemetic war and a millennia-old god who feeds exclusively on people’s bike-riding skills, believing that this knowledge is eminently renewable. Quinn becomes convinced that the threat Hilton spoke of is real when it kills one of her junior staff members. She starts to focus her efforts on the emerging antimemetic war, developing a countermeme capable of overpowering the escapee.

During this process, Quinn inexplicably loses her memories of her relationship with her husband, Adam. Adam traces the erasure of these memories to a parasitic entity that follows Quinn and feeds on her knowledge, which they privately call Sunshine. Though Quinn trusts the assertion that Adam is her husband, she ultimately reasons that their continued relationship would only endanger both their lives. Since she can’t disclose the nature of her work to Adam, Quinn elects to erase all living memories of their relationship.

Quinn discovers a containment unit for an Unknown designated U-3125 and learns that it’s actually her war room for the antimemetic conflict. U-3125 is the designation given to the escapee, which can’t penetrate the insulated containment unit. As Quinn reviews her notes and prior recordings in the room, she realizes that the Organization is slowly losing its struggle against U-3125. Her only hope is to discreetly construct a device that deceased lead researcher Ed Hix designed. This device will amplify the countermeme, making it large and complex enough to match U-3125. However, when Quinn tries to locate the device at the UO facility in Wyeleigh, U-3125 invades and begins to control the minds of her remaining officers. Quinn reaches the vault where she believes the amplifier is located and instead finds the memory bomb Hilton spoke of. With no other choice and no way out, Quinn, who has severe brain damage resulting from her high intake of memory-sustaining (or mnestic) drugs, detonates the bomb and erases all living memories of the Antimemetics Division. Though this prevents the other Organization divisions from conceptualizing U-3125, it leaves them susceptible to the antimemetic abilities of other threatening Unknowns.

U-3125’s dominion gradually reshapes the world. Most of humanity is siloed into massive stone edifices that fuel the range and strength of this Unknown’s psychic abilities. Adam, who has survived the antimemetic war, lives on as a concert violinist. His reality shatters, however, over the recognition of something missing from his life. U-3125, which reveals that its other name is an ideogram pronounced “Va,” tries to assert its power over Adam’s mind, but Sunshine intervenes, saving Adam and leading him to the ruins of UO Wyeleigh. There, Sunshine tries to restore Adam’s memories of his and Quinn’s relationship and leads him to the site of her death. Adam struggles to reconcile Quinn with the gaps in his memory, but ultimately decides to trust that Quinn created these memory gaps so that he could safely carry out her plan if she failed.

Adam sets out to the last-known site where Ed Hix was spotted and discovers that he’s alive. Hix has spent the last 12 years completing the device, only to reveal to Adam that he’s waiting for a person to bring the countermeme that will defeat Va. When Hix realizes that Adam isn’t that person, Adam decides to use a life-threatening mnestic drug to restore his memories of Quinn. The effort is powerful enough to conjure her spirit, which embodies the countermeme required to activate Hix’s Irreality Amplifier. Quinn ascends to “ideatic” space, where her countermeme of radical freedom from fear renders Va completely irrelevant. The world returns to “normal” shortly after Va blinks out of existence.

In the wake of the antimemetic war, Mahlo wonders what happened during the years he can’t remember, though he deduces that it involved a large-scale conflict with an Unknown. A new division is founded at the Organization dedicated to noöspherics, which studies and manages anomalies related to human consciousness and memory. The novel ends with the revelation that the Cryptomorpha gigantes aren’t extinct after all, as one of their survivors feeds on the remains of Va’s parasites.