Hive mind - Definition and Overview

A hive mind (sometimes spelled hivemind) is a form of collective consciousness strongly exhibiting traits of conformity and groupthink.

The term is also used in science fiction to describe a group of individual organisms that together share a single unified mind, distributing thought and communicating with each other through telepathic means. This is somewhat analogous to how colonies (i.e. hives) of social insects such as ants, bees and termites can seem to behave as if they were a single collective organism.

Hive minds in fiction

• The Buggers in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead
• The Inhibitors in Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap
• The Edenists in Peter F. Hamilton's 'The Night's Dawn Trilogy'
• The Tines in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep
• Bruce Sterling's short story "Swarm" in Schismatrix
• The Many in System Shock 2
• The evolving children at the end of Childhood's End.
• The Borg in Star Trek
• The Changelings in Star Trek (while connected in the Great Link)
• The cyborg army of CABAL in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun: Firestorm
• The Rat King in The Ballad of Halo Jones
• The Tyranid race in Warhammer 40,000
• The Zerg race in StarCraft
• The Kharaa (alien species) in Natural Selection
• Gaia and Galaxia in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series
• The gestalt entities in Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human

See also

• Group entity
• Groupthink
• Herd instinct