In 2025, the world turns telepathic. Three maladjusted protagonists navigate a world of psychic entities, from myths to society-sweeping ideologies and even their own inner multitudes:
Astra, a recovering messiah, seeks to redeem the catastrophe she brought to the world by unifying human consciousness.
The Prince, a vicious yet noble pagan, influences the collective dreamscape, striving to revive magic and the old gods.
Deshawn…well Deshawn just wants to make his obsessive maps of psychogeography in peace. So please stop telling him he’s the chosen one.
Inspirations for Psychofauna include Dune, Foundation, Nexus, There Is No Antimemetics Division, Ted Chiang’s “Understand” amongst many many others. Also, hi, I’m the author, Tyler Alterman.
New chapters each Monday at 9pm.
Intro to the World of Psychofauna
The year is 2025. A bioengineered pandemic has swept the world. It’s a retrovirus that genetically alters nervous systems. Now our bodies grow more magnetoreceptors. We all become sensitive to the weak electromagnetic fields given off by other people’s brainwaves (and the bodily equivalent). As a result, everyone becomes "vibe psychic."
Subway rides become psychedelic experiences as you become permeated by the inner worlds of others.
Walking through the park, the vibe of each person you pass washes over you, sometimes alongside their intentions, emotions and vague mental imagery…like an aura of hazy psychic information & feels that radiates out from them.
Psychic contagions rise as boundaries between minds fall. Dancing plagues & flash riots sweep the streets.
Shockwaves of peace radiate out from meditation groups. (And/or self-denial, depending on what type of meditation they’re practicing.)
The spirit of Woodstock bewitches boomers, making them strip naked and practice free love all over again.
Increased feedback between brains grants new life to imaginal entities. Phantasmal beings form frequent mirages across the streets of our cities, where the high density of brains increases the vividness of our shared daydreams.
Hallucinatory devils, dragons, unicorns, and famous fictional characters run rampant – toying with us humans, befriending us, inspiring us, or generally hogging our attention (which they live off of in the same way we live off food and water).
Novel, stranger psychofauna start to develop ecological niches in our shared imaginations. They are documented by new publications like Psi-tings and by people like Mapmaker.
The power of these imaginal beings is belief-based. If we believe that a particular psychofauna is powerful, then it will have increased power over our minds and actions. And so hallucinatory gods fill the top of the hierarchy, growing larger as they possess the brains of new followers.
Though these psychic creatures exist only in people's minds, they begin to influence worldly events by capturing both willing and unwilling hosts.
Egregores (collective minds) & ideologies spread like wildfire. Culture wars become holy wars, each side fighting to stop the other tribe’s beliefs from spreading.
Many people fall into hallucinatory fantasy worlds. Human avatars reinforce their own memeplexes through extreme dress & behavior.
Meditators, hypnotists & mental magick practitioners unleash sorcerous powers across the realm of shared imagination.
For example: If one throws a phantasmal fireball at you, it won’t light you on fire (it’s imaginary). But if that person’s charisma convinces you that the fire is real, you will feel its illusory flames burning you. And that might just give you a heart attack.
The fate of human consciousness will be decided by whichever coalition of humans, gods, and living ideas can create the most compelling memeplex. (Memeplex: a system of beliefs, behaviors, and modes of presence.) Most of these coalitions are dangerous – prizing the survival and expansion of the memeplex over the wellbeing of its hosts.
However, a few intrepid members of society are devoted to psychoecology: evolving and nurturing an ecology of memeplexes that promote flourishing. The dreamers amongst them call this ecology “the Polyphony.”
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When I describe the world of Psychofauna, a common reaction is, "But our world is like that!" And I reply, "Huh, you don't say."
Start reading from the prologue 👇
