What you can’t remember will definitely hurt you: Antimemes and qntm’s Antimemetics SCP saga

How do you contain something you can’t record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you’re at war?

— Antimemetics Division Hub, SCP Foundation

The afternoon of the day before I sat down to write this essay, I came across a sci-fi short film adaptation of the SCP short story “We Need To Talk About Fifty-Five” by noted SCP wiki author “qntm”. The film (can be found in the DUST YouTube channel) covered a side of the Foundation that I had not previously explored, and thus followed a multi-hour rabbit hole of obsessively reading SCP Tales and entries, primarily those by qntm. Once I had emerged from my trance, I found that I had just experienced some of the most enthralling, compelling, incredible science fiction I had ever read.

To contextualise, SCPs are fictional anomalous entities that are the subjects of stories written by numerous individual authors from across the internet; stories which are uploaded to and maintained on the SCP Foundation wiki by a vibrant online community and its moderation teams. “We Need To Talk About Fifty-Five” is a Tale on the SCP wiki originally written by qntm (AKA Sam Hughes, British programmer and sci-fi author) following his writing SCP-055 (the first antimemetic SCP and one of the earliest SCPs overall), both in 2008. This Tale, SCP-055, and the other SCPs and related stories discussed in this essay all revolve around the concept of antimemes and the SCP Foundation’s Antimemetics Division.

The series and novel make up the first part of qntm’s extended work on antimemetics, following the story of a rapidly shrinking Foundation Antimemetics Division and its final remnants, primarily its Division Chief Marion Wheeler, as they attempt to “contain” (which eventually becomes “destroy”) the unknowable, unthinkable, incomprehensible anomaly that is SCP-3125.

The SCP wiki defines an antimeme as “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it”. SCP-055, the earliest instance of the concept in action, is an anomaly described as a “self-keeping secret”, an entity that is able to censor all knowledge of its nature, physical characteristics, and origins. Per qntm’s SCP-055 entry within the canon of the universe, the Foundation, despite its best and continual efforts, has no knowledge of the entity’s history, appearance, or even how and when they acquired and “contained” it. qntm took this concept of entities capable of self-censoring and—aside from creating additional SCPs such as SCP-2256 and SCP-3125—expanded it into the “There Is No Antimemetics Division” series on the SCP wiki between 2015 and 2020, which was then released as an independent print-on-demand paperback and later adapted into a novel and published as There Is No Antimemetics Division (Ballantine Books, 2025).

The series and novel make up the first part of qntm’s extended work on antimemetics, following the story of a rapidly shrinking Foundation Antimemetics Division and its final remnants, primarily its Division Chief Marion Wheeler, as they attempt to “contain” (which eventually becomes “destroy”) the unknowable, unthinkable, incomprehensible anomaly that is SCP-3125 and the end-of-world scenario threat it poses as it continues to hunt down any human being that gains sufficient knowledge of its existence. The sequel series “Five Five Five Five Five” then follows Adam Wheeler in his quest to find Dr Bart Hughes, once a leading Foundation antimemetics researcher and likely the only individual with the knowledge and capacity to save humanity in a post-apocalyptic world following a full manifestation of SCP-3125 into reality.

The Wheelers’ exploits range from harrowing encounters with malevolent entities that resist cognition itself to heartbreaking accounts of the lengths Foundation personnel can go to to protect their loved ones and, troublingly often, all of humanity. The individual entries in qntm’s timeline jump back and forth over one another across the nearly 100-year history of antimemetics research in the SCP canon, filling in gaps in readers’ knowledge in much the same way that a Foundation researcher must familiarise themself with antimemes–in increasingly spectacular (and often equally distressing) chunks that hide in plain sight until one possesses enough information to comprehend what it is they are witnessing. As the story progresses, there are several moments where enough pieces fall into place for the reader to experience revelations that make clearer the stakes and gravity of the unfolding situation leading up to a truly phenomenal conclusion.

On the surface, “Five Five Five Five Five” and “There Is No Antimemetics Division” are both fairly standard, solidly well-written sci-fi jaunts with decent helpings of intrigue and thrill throughout. The characters—especially Marion Wheeler—are fleshed-out, engaging, and thoroughly compelling, the plot pulls the reader in and keeps them captivated throughout, and every setup and payoff feels deliberate and contributes meaningfully to the whole. For all intents and purposes, qntm’s Antimemetics Division saga is a thoroughly successful work of science fiction. What really pushes it into “how does one even begin to write something like this” territory is qntm’s masterful utilisation of the classic SCP Foundation trait of never explicitly revealing the full picture combined with his incredibly effective characters to give readers crucial (and, crucially, fragmented) pieces of the full story to hold on to which fall into place like a perfectly-crafted jigsaw as more of the timeline is revealed, all while pushing the plot forward and having more and more of the conflict unfold. That, and the fact that the very concept of antimemetic anomalies and the ways they’re utilised in the narrative remain consistently, absolutely, absurdly fascinating.

qntm isn’t the only author on the SCP wiki to have explored antimemetics in their work. Other notable pieces include the series “What the Dead Know” by sirpudding (which takes place during and after There Is No Antimemetics Division), SCP-033 by Mulciber (another of the very earliest SCPs), SCP-1425 by Silberescher (which was “a massive influence” for a number of entries in qntm’s saga), and many more. A helpful list of antimemetic SCPs and relevant Tales is maintained on the Antimemetics Division Hub page of the SCP wiki, which I highly recommend checking out. Antimemetics is a vast concept with frankly unlimited potential to be explored in literature, and I for one cannot wait to read more of it in the days to come.

Arwin Shams Siddiquee was here.