When I was watching the first episode of Pluribus, the new science fiction series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, my first reaction was, "This feels familiar."
I realize that this might not be everyone's reaction, but I've been a science fiction fan for my entire life, and as such I have a substantial database of references to draw upon for things like this. There's a bit of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain to it; a lot of Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 novel The Puppet Masters*; and a hint of Darwin's Radio, by Greg Bear. It's not really The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing (From Outer Space), although they're both close cousins, and there's maybe just a dab of Blood Music in there someplace, also a Greg Bear novel (based on a short story.)
But none of those were the first thing that crossed my mind. That honour goes to My Little Golden Book About Zogg, an obscure parody by cartoonist Jason Yungbluth, who chose the same method of transmitting the viral code as in Pluribus: encoding it into an interstellar message carried by a modulating wave carrier.
And, as in the page above, you do have to wonder how much of the known Universe has decoded a mysterious message from the stars...
- Sid
* The Puppet Masters details exactly the same kind of extraterrestrial takeover and amalgamation, except the aliens are macroscopic rather than microscopic, about the size and shape of a starfish.
