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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2765 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 8, 2024

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I finished There Is No Antimemetics Division last night.

Overall... Good. Lovecraftian modern horror with a dash of X-files. Excellent writing with atmosphere for days.

Like any other book of this genre I think it starts off strong and then tapers off towards the end in many ways. 4/5 maybe.

For those who read and enjoyed it I think a similar novel was Annihilation. TINAMD was far better in one key way: it never sacrificed being understandable in the name of pushing the boundaries of art, which annoyed (and enthralled) me about Annihilation.

A good review with similar complaints to those I had is here: https://a.co/d/9cLqhP7

On a related note, anyone noticed the hard left turn on recent SCP articles? I occasionally go back to read new highly upvoted posts and the last few times there were a) an apocalyptic story that turned out to primarily be a lesbian love story b) an article literally titled "deadnamed" about exactly what you would expect and c) the most hamfisted allegory for south US anti-black racism I've seen.

It's been years since I've read any SCP articles, but I really enjoyed them at the time. It breaks my heart to hear they, too, have been coopted. Everything sacred must be profaned, apparently.

Thankfully (?) I read this book solely based on its title and cover art. I'm totally outside of whatever community this was/is.

I, on the other hand, wasn't even aware that it had been turned into a book.

"the aristocrats", horrible ravenous cannibal monsters that 1% of humans mature into.

Some story about an industrialist making a huge factory machine thing and feeding his workers to it because they couldn't unionize fast enough.

A rewrite of the "Chronicles of the Daeva", where the deava alternate history merges into our own, and it turns out they weren't a blood-magic slavemaster empire of human-sacrificing necromancers, but actually a peaceful, enlightened matriarchy and everything bad written about them was just an evil plot to convince people to keep them sealed away.

That last one was where I checked out. Chronicles of the Daeva is one of my all-time favorite SCP entries. Look how they massacred my boy...

...As Arjin notes, this was all years ago.

Recent? I'm not following SCPs, so maybe its got better since, and is now lapsing again, but this is ancient news.

I don't doubt that there always has been such an undercurrent, but at least in my impression the most upvoted articles had mostly original main topics and small woke side topics at most. Now it feels the other way around. But maybe I've just missed it.

I could be wrong, especially as I haven’t yet read the last Southern Reach book, but I think the shared DNA is a bit oversold.

Antimemetics, as with many SCP stories, is about experimentation. Ask a question, devise an experiment, observe the results. Very /r/rational. Just because the subject is Lovecraftian doesn’t mean they aren’t approaching it with the scientific method.

Annihilation is almost the opposite. When the expedition members express goals, they’re cryptic, confused, and not necessarily their own. Characters try things for bad reasons or no obvious reason at all. The plot develops with a sort of delirious, runaway feel, because neither the characters nor the reader can know what to expect. These are intentional artistic choices, and they’re very well-executed, but they sell a different story than Antimemetics. I’d call them anti-rational.

This isn’t a counter-recommendation, both because I loved Annihilation and because it does include a lot of the stuff that makes Antimemetics fun. So I’d still encourage SCP fans to try it. I’ll also offer a couple related recommendations.

  • Sam Hughes’ other work is very good. Ra, in particular, sells the worldbuilding. It’s also got a twist that brings it a lot closer to Lovecraftian and a lot further from SCP.
  • The STALKER series takes place in an irradiated wasteland surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It’s filled with horrible creatures, forgotten laboratories, and physics-bending anomalies. While there are some anti-rational elements, it’s played much more like SCP as the player learns to handle and exploit the weirdness. You can play an excellent open-source campaign here.
  • Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a Georgian comedy of manners where several leading characters are magicians. Those characters would very much like to have a rational, cause-and-effect sort of story, but alas! their setting has faeries. I find this book does an excellent job illustrating why such entities are aggressively anti-rational.
  • CORDYCEPS is my pick for a bridge between Antimemetics and Annihilation. I don’t want to spoil it, but it combines character volition with a lot of reasons why that could be a bad, bad idea. Very original. Very good.

There Is No Antimemetics Division

Man I love that one. The second half isn't quite as good, but the first half is absolutely enthralling with its new ideas and the tactics the protagonists use to overcome such novel problems.

I'll have to give Annihilation a try. The movie was pretty good.

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