The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction Page: 24
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real world-that is, of course, if a cultural discourse that rose around these memes has not
already acquired us before we even read the story. For example, the meme of shape-changing as
a metaphor for alienation has already acquired many readers who have not yet read Kafka's
"Metamorphosis," where this particular meme "breeds" quite effectively. When, and if, they read
the story, the meme would only be reinforcing itself, not acquiring them anew.
To return to active memes in "Lull," however: we broaden our understanding of the
characters' actions and personalities when we uncover memes-in-action instead of reading the
same simply as ghost-in-the-machine decision-making. One of the narrators in "Lull" states that
"Ed liked to make up games. People paid him to make up games. Back when we had a regular
poker night, he was always teaching us a new game and this game would be based on a TV show
or some dream he'd had" (54). Here, Ed acts according to meme-clusters that reinforce not only
his ideas but also his job-he is a game designer. The operative question becomes "Does 'Ed'
the central meaner, the ghost in the machine, the one who 'owns' the brain-like to make up
games, or is this simply the convergence of the varied 'make-games' ideas in his memosphere?"
In fact, since Ed is his memosphere, the question is really why he is acting on and perpetuating
game-making memes, not if He is dispositionally more concerned, in this instance, with
reinforcing game memes than others. When Ed goes on to claim "We'll need to play fast-no
stopping to think about it-just do what I tell you to do" (54), we see that the memes at work
here have involved what we might metaphorically call a sub-routine that makes their enacting,
their transmission, even more likely: a voluntary suppression of other conscious meaning-
negotiation. The players in Ed's game are not to bother weighing and judging the results of his
latest memospheric convergence; rather, they are to quiet the process and give all primary
processing over entirely to the game. Whatever conclusions we might form about what roles24
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Bradley, Darin Colbert. The Little Weird: Self and Consciousness in Contemporary, Small-press, Speculative Fiction, dissertation, May 2007; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3703/m1/28/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .