Ridley Park has not been dead, merely sleeping like a hungover deity ignoring its worshippers. As has become my regrettable habit, most of my creative energy has been siphoned into non-fiction projects, leaving the poor world deprived of my fictional offerings and my blog gathering dust like an abandoned cathedral.
But fate – or more accurately, an algorithm – shoved a book into my face with all the subtlety of a street preacher: There Is No Antimemetics Division. Hard science fiction, horror, and something about antimemes. Naturally, I pressed Play Sample instead of behaving like a responsible adult and reading the summary. Antimemetic sounded deliciously unwholesome. Straight down the hatch.
I’m only into Chapter Two, so don’t expect a full exegesis yet. This is merely a field report from the early trenches.
I bought the Audible version, because audiobooks are the only thing keeping me sane through workouts, where otherwise, one contemplates mortality and the price of groceries. As the sample ran, I learned two things:
- Parts of the narrative are redacted.
- They did not redact to protect state secrets or Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost.
No – it’s a stylistic device. A textual blackout. Beeps, static, corrupted passages like intercepted voicemail from a doomed expedition. Being partial to experimental prose, I took it as a dare. My brain applauded.
The effect reminded me of Irvine Welsh’s Filth – not in theme, but in the editorial scars, the moth-eaten structure. Welsh, more widely known for Trainspotting, does chaos like astrophysicists do numbers. Obfuscation as aesthetic. Disorder as design. The connection may be superficial, but it’s one worth pocketing.
The title earns its relevance quickly: certain ideas spread like plague; others erase themselves on contact. Antimemes – cognitive black holes. Information that cannot be held without dissolving. A story that fights the mind that reads it.
Hard sci-fi rarely offers such structural mischief. I’m morbidly delighted to see where the horror emerges, when the narrative begins to eat its own memory like a recursive ouroboros.
More to come, once I descend deeper into the antimemetic labyrinth.
And yes – lest anyone call the coroner – I am still writing.
I happened upon this short film of the story whilst seeking a cover image.
Ridley Park 