Writing from a hive mind POV
The story:
Centuries ago, humanity have been incorporated into an alien hive mind, spread by a bacterial-like infection. The "bacteria" infects the blood and brain and allows the infected to join their minds together, there is no alien overlord, just an interplanetary community of spirit. Everyone is happy.
The problem is that our immune system starts to fight back. More and more babies are born with little to no space-bacteria in their brain, and need daily injections to stay "normal".
Even worse, the space-bacteria signal strength is globally diminishing.
We can barely feel the presence of the other infected species outside the solar system, soon we'll only be able to share our thoughs with the people in our immediate vicinity.
Teams of space-travelers are sent to other planetary systems in the hope of finding new strains of the bacteria to re-infect everyone. They are humanity's last hope to be happy again.
My story explores two facets of this terrible, terrible situation:
One part is about people who stayed on earth. They are trying to find a cure against our immune system, struggling to maintain social order and trying to cope with the loss of happiness.
The other is about a team sent to space: they travel around, meet infected and non-infected civilizations, ask for information on the bacteria in space-taverns, learn the concept of money and hire a few space-mercenaries to help them in their noble quest.
Additional information:
Our bacterial hive-mind is kind of like a single mind controlling numerous bodies at the same time. Each of the bodies have different perceptions, since their senses perceive the world differently and their basic instincts are still there (young ones enjoy playing a lot, most of them enjoy hugging and kissing, some prefer to hide under a blanket during storms, etc.). The collective can feel different emotions and needs at the same time, but it's still one mind. Like most creatures, it tries to live its life in the most agreeable way possible.
On earth, the connection is deteriorating, so as the story progresses some parts of the hive mind degenerate into partially connected individuals.
One part of the story is told from the earth collective mind POV, another from a smaller collective mind POV, formed by the ship crew, and from the POV of other hive minds they'll meet on their journey (I haven't decided yet on how these other collectives will be structured).
I was thinking about writing in a first view perspective, while using "we" and "us". But the first scenes I have written are super-annoying to read.
My Questions:
How can I write a story from a collective mind perspective without being confusing or obnoxious? Should I use a first or third person narrative?
Are there well-written stories told from a hive mind POV?
Thanks everyone for your advice, I'll write a few scenes to try different styles and see what works.
Full disclosure: I write in French and my worst enemy seems to be not the fundamental difference between human and alien-hive-mind perception of reality, but the third person plural past tense, which sounds unnatural and wrong.
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David Brin's Uplift series has the traeki/Jophur, which are physically connected hive minds of stacked rings. Each ring is nominally a separate entity; the distinction between traeki and Jophur is the presence of a so-called 'master ring', basically an overriding personality which controls the other parts of the hive mind.
As the species is only one of the viewpoints in the books, use of the third person is very effective as a reminder to the reader that a stack of rings is a hive mind, not a single personality. Use of the first person indicates an overriding (single) personality. In your case I believe the distinction between first and third person could even be(come) a central theme, or way of expressing the difference between a thought from a hive mind and a thought from an individual. To me it seems that your choice of narrative should be based on 'where' the source is for a given thought or feeling at any given time.
This is also true for a given point of view - if a single person is walking through a room, the first or second person view is definitely not irrelevant; even though the control and sentience remains with the hive, you have made it clear that basic instincts still contribute to what defines individuals. Separate enjoyment by separate entities is an interesting angle in your introduction; bear in mind that this will also affect things like fashion, status, sex, careers, experience...
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18626. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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(This might get good answers on WorldBuilding SE also.)
I think you have to decide, from a storytelling viewpoint, how these people communicate. Does each individual have his/her own thoughts but others pop in and out like everyone is always in the same room and thinking out loud? Do you only hear the thoughts of people within X geographical distance? Or is it more like the Borg, where there's the constant white noise of a billion minds in the background?
How has this affected society? Is there an Internet? Are there phones, email, texts, mail? Do people travel as much? Can they link to the point of looking through someone else's eyes, so to speak?
Once you work through these structural details, it should become clearer how to tell the story — if you have individuals who think but are always hearing other individuals, that could be first-person or third-person limited, but if everyone is a Borg drone with free will, then third-person will make more sense.
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I think what you're looking for is Emergence.
Emergence seems to be a fundamental part of our universe, and it basically means that dumb things can become smarter together.
An individual transistor is very limited, it can only block or let an electric signal through, however, you can build logic gates out of them, and from those, a computer.
The same is true to ants, their hive is way "smarter" than it's constituting parts. Take the hive, and replace ants with humans. and the hive becomes our civilization. We are different types of idiots, who together, can complement each other's weaknesses, most of us anyway.
If you were to connect together humans, I believe it would remove their individual flaws and insecurities, and create a being that is one level higher in the order of life than humans. Though it can also be that I watched too much of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
More info on emergence: https://youtu.be/16W7c0mb-rE
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