34 | New Scientist | 9 April 2022
Views Culture
The sci-fi column
“THE quality wasn’t very good,
but it was good enough for a
debate,” says Spence, the narrator
of Malcolm Devlin’s short but
powerful horror novella And Then
I Woke Up. He is describing the
viral video that kicked off the
zombie apocalypse. “Some people
said the men were kissing, some
insisted one was biting the neck of
the other,” Spence recalls. “He was
eating him, they said. Eating him!”
Without giving too much away,
Spence is recounting these events
from the rehabilitation facility
where infected people are slowly
reintegrated into society. But if
you think I just spoiled the plot,
think again. This zombie
apocalypse is nothing like what
you have been taught to expect
by previous books and movies.
Devlin has written a horror story
where the “zombies” are memes.
Memes are, of course, ideas that
lend themselves to jumping from
one brain to another. Like that
trick where someone tells you not
to think about an elephant, once
the image has made its way into
your mind, you can’t stop the
chain of events that unfolds.
Richard Dawkins coined the term
meme for the phenomenon in
1976, back when it was a relatively
unproblematic aspect of how
units of culture are transmitted
through society. But in our
hyper-networked world, memetic
spread has become uncontrolled
and uncontrollable, and there is
something a little unsettling about
it. From the QAnon conspiracy
theory to the cheezburger cat,
there is no telling what will show
up in your feed or who produced
it. Whether you consent or not,
it will nestle between the folds of
your brain and start to lay its eggs.
This sinister process is well
established in neuroscience:
where our expectations lead,
our perceptions of reality follow.
Memes can set those expectations,
distorting and warping them
with someone else’s narrative.
When memes go bad A growing micro-genre of sci-fi literature
is exposing the power of infectious ideas and the horrors they
can inflict on our perception of reality, says Sally Adee
“ Memes can set
our expectations,
distorting and warping
them with someone
else’s narrative”
Sometimes, these are harmless,
like the dress that seems to be
both blue and white or the audio
version, yanny/laurel. Other
times, they are more sinister, like
the kissing men who may or may
not be cannibals, or a conspiracy
theory that a pizza restaurant
had paedophiles in its basement.
Memes can even distort what
is right in front of your face.
While the events of Devlin’s
book are horrifically plausible, in
There is No Antimemetics Division
by Sam Hughes (also known by
the pseudonym qntm), perceptual
expectations are managed by
some of the creepiest supernatural
beings imaginable. As they lurk
unseen by almost everyone, they
wreak havoc on an unsuspecting
public, who make sense of things
by inventing narratives to explain
the horrors around them. An entity
that creeps around collecting
fingers, for example, is explained
away as an unusually high rate of
kitchen and carpentry accidents.
Devlin and Hughes aren’t the
first to explore the power that
infectious memes wield over
our reality. In The City & the City,
China Miéville showed readers
two overlapping metropolises in
which citizens are trained from
birth to “unsee” any evidence of
the other city and its residents.
Authors are increasingly waking
to the hypnotic power of memes,
a topic that is becoming more
relevant by the year. These three
books are a great introduction
to this growing micro-genre of
science fiction. I recommend all
three of them to the skies. You
might end up with a mild case
of existential horror, but at least,
unlike the stories’ protagonists,
you will know what to expect. ❚
MI
RC
EA
MO
IRA
/SH
UT
TE
RS
TO
CK
In our hyper-networked
world, memetic spread
has become uncontrolled
Books
And Then I Woke Up
Malcolm Devlin
Tordotcom (from 12 April)
There is No
Antimemetics
Division
Sam Hughes (qntm)
Self-published
The City & the City
China Miéville
Picador
Sally also
recommends...
Book
Sea of Tranquility
Emily St John Mandel
Picador (from 28 April)
From the fine mind that
produced Station Eleven
and The Glass Hotel comes
another treat: a century-
spanning, genre-crossing,
time-travel book about the
nature of reality, set in a
near-future of pandemics
and parallel worlds.
Sally Adee is a technology
and science writer based
in London. Follow her on
Twitter @sally_adee