It bears mention this project has drunk from many sources to sustain its inspiration, cannibalizing both our own past works and lifting concepts from other media — hopefully with meaningful innovation!
Some popular culture osmosis goes without saying: the changelings from My Little Pony and the xenomorphs from Alien are very distinct touchstones. Taylor’s swarm abilities in Worm, or the focus on silk and weavers in Hollow Knight: Silksong also undeniably left a mark on this creation.
More acutely, there were two niche stories we read last year and deeply enjoyed, and only in retrospect is it apparant how directly resonant they are with this setting’s concepts. Both are incomplete, and we eagerly await every update.
Seeping through (57k+ words) is a grounded fantasy story involing a a flesh-eating mimic and a gun-toting infantrywoman. The deuterogonist is torn (pun intended) between two different blends of toxic yuri — but what impresses us the most about this one is how viscerally, anatomically vivid it is. The prose is very well-honed. Especially the opening chapters is one of the most satisfying portrayals of how it would feel to be a shape-shifting nightmare. Later chapters dive into the creature’s anatomy in a way that pleases the bug-lover in us, and there’s a unique pleasure to reading an it/its protagonist.
Aberrant (49k+ words) is a science fiction story where humanity’s expansion to other star systems is plagued by a race of parasites. After her wife is transformed into one of them, the protagonist researches their genes to find a way to safely transform herself as part of her plan to rescue her from the carnivorous hivemind. There is some lovely depictions of feral violence in this one, and the text is unafraid to give its aliens a sexual allure. All of which is to say — it’s hot. A parasitic hive that transforms and brainwashes its victims into monstrous, murderous women? It’s hard to think of any other story quite so kindred with Vermin Cathexis, for that we remain curious to see where it goes.
Those were topical at the time of this page’s creation, but others merit mention.
- We Will Evolve, a metroid fanfic from the author our favorite webfic of all time. You don’t need to be familiar with the source material — we weren’t. It’s a thrilling read, and portrays Samus as exactly the terrifying force you’d expect given our protagonist is the X-parasites.
- Exponent System is a more technological approach: a eusocial collective created through genetic engineering and cybernetics. The protagonist, unfortunately, spends the opening arcs disconnected from her group, but the contrast with human psychology still makes this a fantastic entry in the genre.
- Call of the Karax is foremost excellent smut, but follows it up with pretty solid worldbuilding and backstory for biology of the fungal hivemind.
We’re on the lookout for published novels that cover similar topics. At risk of spoilers, we would point to Greg Bear’s Blood Music as a defining example of a , and it doubles as a sympathetic group mind. Peter Watts’s Echopraxia (sequel to Blindsight), as well as supplementary writings in the Firefall series — especially The Twenty-One Second God! — are preoccupied with mind hives, but readers are granted vanishing little insight into their inner machinations.
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time and sequels definitely deserve a mention. We haven’t read much of his bibliography, but we’ve seen at least one reviewer complain that he needs to give alien hiveminds rest — which we take as a sign we should have been reading more A.T. yesterday!
The potential for cybernetic implants to implement a group mind seems rarely explored to my satisfation. The Ramex Naam’s Nexus series does an admirable job, when grading on that curve. It’s a semi-cyberpunk thriller focusing posthumanism and the intermible conflict between posthumans groping toward a hivemind and baseline humanity. We thought the first book was competent enough, though we haven’t continued reading the sequel.
Max Harms’s Crystal Trilogy might be a high watermark — we mention it chiefly because we found it mind-rewiringly good — but it’s at best tangentially relevant. The society has similarities to what we’re seek from hivemind depictions, but they aren’t numerous or proliferating enough to quite scratch the itch.
One invigorating well we’ve sampled from was Magic the Gathering’s New Phyrexia. We’re ignorant of much of the franchise’s broader lore, though the short story “A Hollow Body” very much impressed us — and it furnished a fascination with the character of Ixhel only satisfied by delving into fanfiction. Of them, “More than the Suns Might Rise” was a standout work, brought to my attention by another author, littjara_mirrorlake, who has a several other oneshots (and an in-progress adaptation of New Phyrexia to Dungeons and Dragons). For something longer than short stories, we quite enjoyed the Worm crossover, All Will Know Redemption (38k words).
This page was first written late at night, and thus not everything relevant came to mind. We’ll make an effort to update this in the future with other connections drawn.