Science Fiction is a wild, wild genre
Us and Our
junk-eaten mountains,
metal-cabled ocean
and gold light cities
just might
be just one,
alien,
organism,
sleeping
as one, and angry
in an endless
dream.
Thoughts
The concept of a hivemind is common in fiction. The examples I think of are from This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Garden and The Agency are two hivemind organisations opposed in a messy war. One hivemind is organic, the other technological. But they have similarities.
A hivemind, as defined in science fiction, is a group of beings connected as one consciousness, able and/or forced to share thoughts and information freely. Every member is part of the often-vast system, working together towards a common goal. In a hivemind the individual is unimportant, disposable, but the collective must be protected.
Fictional hiveminds remind me of our own society (probably because they were conceived in it) - doesn't humanity also work in a series of local and global systems, interacting with other members of the group to share knowledge? Obviously, society doesn't strive as one towards a common goal, but with technology allowing us to communicate more and faster, are we moving towards a real hivemind? Maybe we're united in our ignorance, unified in a common goal of discord and chaos. That's the question I ask, whether we are trapped "in an endless/dream" or not.
-tomatobean
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