How would a massive, shared, alien consciousness communicate with humanity if it had no frame of reference for individual humans? In many science fiction stories, when faced with a vaguely telepathic alien species, the notion that human beings have secrets in their minds becomes of primary importance to the plot. Both 3 Body Problem and this year’s breakout Apple TV hit, Pluribus, tackle this notion from different angles, with the outright honesty of alien intelligence being both morally dubious and logistically jarring. Humanity might crave complete honesty in theory, but science fiction sometimes teaches us that total honesty isn’t always desirable, or even ethical.
But how does a strange hive mind like this even function? And, if we’re not part of that hive mind, how can a subjective, non-joined single human mind fully communicate with such a vast, different type of awareness? In the penultimate episode of Pluribus, “Charm Offensive,” the series seems to allude to the origin of the shared minds of the Others, and in doing so, intentionally or not, references one of the best sci-fi stories of all time: Solaris.
