I haven’t seen pluribus, but tangentially I used to have the same assumption of the Borg, from Star Trek. But to be honest, I don’t even think that the Borg are intended to be an anti communist allegory, despite being a hive mind. Ultimately, the hive mind’s entire purpose is to fulfill the whims of the Borg Queen. In summary my point is that it’s totally possible to write a hive mind, and to use it to even criticize monarchies, or any other ideology for that matter.
Not sure sure what the Borg were intended as originally, but adding the Queen was a huge failure of imagination. They had to reduce a cosmic hivemind into having a singular human ruler, so they could do human things at it and it would make human mistakes.
The Pluribus collective having hardcoded ethical imperatives like “no killing” is already more interesting than the Borg Queen… though the viewpoint character is really dragging things out and the Pluribus’ forced incompetence at interaction with her is a bit odd.
the Borg could be seen through a more Marxist lens.
the Federation is already nominally mature socialist but has not actually reached communism yet and the Borg could be seen as a failed path to “stateless, moneyless, classless” society. basically a species that decided to try a short cut (let’s just all jack in and become a Society of One) instead of building communism on more natural terms.
something like the Culture (Ian Banks) could be seen as what a truly communist Federation could become while still maintaining and protecting individual sapience. everyone’s still jacked in but it’s voluntary and entirely one directional. the neural lace (standard cybernetic augmentation everyone of biological origin has) is more about gaining totally authority over your own body and having built in communicator as well as putting humanoids on par with fellow sapient AI comrades
(also the Queen did fuck this up badly i really hate that they went there. at most the Queen should just be a sort of hallucination of the greater Hive Mind or like a dream character created to interact easier with species difficult to assimilate)
I haven’t seen pluribus, but tangentially I used to have the same assumption of the Borg, from Star Trek. But to be honest, I don’t even think that the Borg are intended to be an anti communist allegory, despite being a hive mind. Ultimately, the hive mind’s entire purpose is to fulfill the whims of the Borg Queen. In summary my point is that it’s totally possible to write a hive mind, and to use it to even criticize monarchies, or any other ideology for that matter.
Not sure sure what the Borg were intended as originally, but adding the Queen was a huge failure of imagination. They had to reduce a cosmic hivemind into having a singular human ruler, so they could do human things at it and it would make human mistakes.
The Pluribus collective having hardcoded ethical imperatives like “no killing” is already more interesting than the Borg Queen… though the viewpoint character is really dragging things out and the Pluribus’ forced incompetence at interaction with her is a bit odd.
the Borg could be seen through a more Marxist lens.
the Federation is already nominally mature socialist but has not actually reached communism yet and the Borg could be seen as a failed path to “stateless, moneyless, classless” society. basically a species that decided to try a short cut (let’s just all jack in and become a Society of One) instead of building communism on more natural terms.
something like the Culture (Ian Banks) could be seen as what a truly communist Federation could become while still maintaining and protecting individual sapience. everyone’s still jacked in but it’s voluntary and entirely one directional. the neural lace (standard cybernetic augmentation everyone of biological origin has) is more about gaining totally authority over your own body and having built in communicator as well as putting humanoids on par with fellow sapient AI comrades
(also the Queen did fuck this up badly i really hate that they went there. at most the Queen should just be a sort of hallucination of the greater Hive Mind or like a dream character created to interact easier with species difficult to assimilate)