The idea that lived -- and was contagious!

[alicemacher]

An Alan Moore "Tharg's Future Shocks" story.


From "Eureka!", 2000 AD prog 325 (16 July 1983). Art by Mike White. 1.3 of 5 pages.



A spaceship crew of sixteen people has spent three years looking for alien life, with no success. Then one day, crew member Marty Kessler points out to the narrator, his shipmate Phil, that the problem is, they don't know what exactly to look for. Marty suggests that an alien needn't be an animal. It could be a sapient gas or crystal formation; it could even be an idea. Several crew members debate this notion and ultimately dismiss it. But six months later, Marty announces to everyone he's made first contact.







Everyone, figuring Marty's gone insane, walks away from him. Except for Elaine Kennedy, who stays to listen, out of compassion. And sure enough...








Before long, Phil realizes he's the only one on the ship who hasn't been infected with the idea. How does he know? He's the only one who isn't grinning. But one night, Bill Morse says to him, "If all time is simultaneous and all events happen in..."







I've tried to imagine what comes after "then time is but a figment of mind, and--." The best I could come up with was something like "free will is an illusion. Therefore, nothing we do has any meaning." But that last statement doesn't necessarily follow from the previous ones. And even if one accepted and internalized it, I think the result would be more along the lines of curling up and brooding in despair, possibly ending in simple resignation and acceptance and going on with life. As opposed to a manic, euphoric urge to spread the idea around.

What do you think?

Comments

[llordllama]

Ah, fond memories of this and other Future Shocks of this period, which was around the time I was first picking up 2000AD. Decent storytelling and art, and all in a neat little few pages. Perfect snack sized comic book pleasure!

I think I've always filed the 'answer' to this under the same heading as Python's 'funniest joke' - if you knew the solution, the tale wouldn't be half as impactful.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, I think we have to assume there's some completely unexpected linguistic sequence to follow since not many sentences would have the same transformative effect on so many different people

[alicemacher]

Yup. Trying to complete the idea, and failing as I noted above, made me think of the Most Writers Are Human trope. Coming up with something a truly alien (not just a humanoid with pointy ears or green skin) entity would say or do is damned hard if not impossible, since we can only use our human brains for that.

This also explains why, despite all the talk in the Bible and elsewhere in Abrahamic religious traditions about God's motives and ways being inscrutable to us mortal humans, pretty much every work, regardless of genre, which portrays God's thoughts and actions directly yields more of a "human being writ large," as my Intro to Philosophy professor would say.

[jlbarnett]

"Then we've already made contact with alien life forms and we just have to realize we have"

[themajesticmoose]

THARG TOLD YOU NOT TO FINISH THE SENTENCE YOU FOOL

[deh_tommy]

Uggghhh, I hate these kinds of stories. Not as in I dislike them (far from it!) but more as in they completely, truly and utterly terrify me to no end. Why do I do this to myself?

[icon_uk]

Much love for the Time Twisters and Future Shocks.

I think many creators found them to be very good training as they had a handful of pages to set a scene and tell a done-in-one story.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

"I think the result would be more along the lines of curling up and brooding in despair, possibly ending in simple resignation and acceptance and going on with life. As opposed to a manic, euphoric urge to spread the idea around."

You're thinking about it like it's just a profoundly depressing thought you had one day.

This is a sentient idea that both wants you to submit to it and wants to spread further. So naturally it's going to revolve both around the pointless meaninglessness of individuality and free will and how wonderful that is and how you should tell everyone you meet about how wonderful the pointless meaninglessness of individuality and free will is once you accept it.

[lizard_of_aus]

With Anti-Life, you can justify anything! Submit to Darkseid today!

[tcampbell1000]

To build on this a bit, I think the makeup of an idea includes a sort of instruction for how to think of it. The idea of spreading democracy, for instance, includes a positive feeling about the likely results. While some people clearly don't like democracy, their idea of what the spread of it means seems different enough to qualify as another idea altogether.

As we all know by now, a virus will only succeed if it can coexist with its host long enough to spread to other hosts. The specific nature of the idea isn't important, and presumably we can't understand it without going mad anyway, but the way it makes everyone feel so wonderful, especially when they share it, is what makes it effective.

[icon_uk]

A bit like Johnny Quick's "3X2(9YZ)4A" which anyone can say, but only if they comprehend what it MEANS can they access the Speed Force.

[deathcrist2000]

Alan Moore, interestingly enough, seems to have devoted his career to the ... of that idea, climaxing in Jerusalem. So go read that to find out what the ... is.

[tcampbell1000]

I've tried, I really have. All I got out of Jerusalem that I didn't feel I'd already gotten from easier Moore stuff was "my hometown is SO INTERESTING you guys, really, there should be more stories about Northampton than there are about New York City."

[cainofdreaming]

Global Frequency did the memetic alien bit too. I really have to read that series again.