qntm is seriously good. I had There Is No Antimemetics Division on my Kindle for ages, I can’t remember now where I found the recommendation, but I had some notion in my head that it was this thing, so I did not read it, and then I did and it turned out to be this other thing which was absolutely fantastic, so much that I cannot remember what the “this thing” was. (Seriously, that is how articulate I am, and why I should never review anything. When I say “this thing”, it is some sort of qualia that I don’t have language for, maybe akin to synesthesia or something, except of course that it is not because it is not about actually experiencing something and the experience being processed strangely. Enough.)

I finished Ed yesterday, I think I only have Fine Structure left to go. Ed was a lot of fun, quirky, full of thoughts dealt with in short chapters that would have each filled a fat space opera volume for some other writers. (Not quite Anthony Burgess ticking off Stanislaw Lem for writing some list of novels he was never going to get around to writing.) As someone who is often trawling for the good stuff, I have had to accept Sturgeon’s maximum that some large percentage of everything is crap, and of course he was justifying not deriding SF when he said that. But why is it that I dunno, 90% of everything that is lauded is crap? I’m reading qntm’s work thinking, why is there no buzz about this? Obviously there is a bit, otherwise the recommendation would never have hit me, but seriously, when I look at some of the anaemic stuff being nominated for major SF prizes, why isn’t say There Is No Antimemetics Division up there? Its clever, thoughtful, and what I like – as demonstrated by the serial nature of Ed, moving from one fantastic thing to another – the work takes consequences seriously, and thinks through what comes next?

There Is No Antimemetics Division is right up my alley – crazy weird, fortean, SF, horror, apocalypse, super smart folk puzzling through the most perplexing craziness to find solutions, sacrifice – so I was very happy to belatedly discover that the author has a publishing deal which will lead to a new version of There Is No Antimemetics Division entering the world. Hurray! And hurray for whatever other new book is the second volume of qntm ‘s deal.

So keep an eye out for There Is No Antimemetics Division later this year and buy it and read it and enjoy it and don’t make my mistake of thinking it is the thing that it isn’t, whatever that means.