Short science fiction-horror novel, written by qntm (better known to Everythingians as sam512), originally published serially on the SCP Foundation Wiki in 2008 and 2015-2020 and then published in book form in 2021.
This is a novel about the SCP Foundation, so let's review that briefly. The real-world SCP Foundation is a collaborative fiction project in which many different writers tell stylized horror, science fiction, and fantasy stories through fake academic/governmental/scientific research files about the fictional SCP Foundation, which is a secret international agency tasked with collecting supernatural monsters and phenomena and determining ways to keep them imprisoned or harmless. SCPs can be horrifying creatures, harmless but interesting artifacts, or apocalyptic, world-destroying threats.
Examples include SCP-173, a concrete statue that can only move when it's not being directly observed, but can move and kill while you're blinking your eyes; SCP-106, a rotting old man who can gruesomely corrupt and decay anything and anyone he touches; SCP-682, a powerful, indestructible reptilian monster that hates and wants to destroy all life; SCP-261, a magic vending machine; SCP-999, an orange blob with a friendly, puppy-like personality that makes people happier through physical contact; and SCP-423, Fred, an entity that can manifest within fictional narratives as minor characters.
This brings us to qntm's novel, which is set within the SCP Foundation in the rarely-remembered Antimemetics Division. An antimeme is a real thing -- it's something that's easy to forget or hard to remember or memorize. It's why good passwords are so difficult to remember, and why dreams are so easy to forget. But within the SCP Foundation, an antimeme can be a drug administered to cause localized amnesia, a special camouflage that makes something hard to see or remember, or an entity that eats memories. The Antimemetics Division is doused in so many memory-erasing phenomena, high-ranking members of the Foundation have to take special drugs just so they'll remember the division exists. Sometimes, division personnel forget important safety and security protocols.
And sometimes, you have to forget what the real threats even are, because just knowing them makes you -- and the world -- a target for annihilation.
When it comes to plots, qntm's work is intricate and unpredictable, so it's hard to reveal too much without cracking the story's foundation. But let's say this: the characters in this book have to battle the most dangerous SCP of all, one easily capable of erasing the universe, and they have to do it without entirely remembering what the threat even is, to keep it from growing even stronger. They've fought this threat more than once -- and they've lost every time, even if no one ever remembers it afterwards. Maybe this time will be different?
We get some excellent characters mixed in here. There's Marion Wheeler, the head of the Antimemetics Division, extremely intelligent and competent, and still terrified about how badly the odds are stacked against her. There's Adam Wheeler, Marion Wheeler's civilian husband, a talented musician, and a man who seems to be naturally immune to antimemes. There's Paul Kim, a guy who's having a very rough first day on the job, especially because it isn't his first day on the job.
The settings are also a lot of fun, ranging from fussy foundation board rooms and offices to a tropical island inhabited by gigantic animals that cannot be perceived or remembered to a community concert hall filled with people whose minds have been crushed from existence. The SCP Foundation is a weird, weird place, and it needs weird, weird places inside it.
And the plot is intricate and unpredictable -- and wonderfully, terribly scary.
If you love science fiction, horror, and deep, complex plots that don't lead you where you expected to go, this is something you're going to want to read.
horrorquest