ABSTRACT
Given its proximity in Willis’s canon to Doomsday Book (1992), which is preoccupied by the spread of viral and bacterial disease, it is perhaps unsurprising that Bellwether (1996) focuses so intensely on the role of contagion—but in Bellwether it is language, attitudes, and tastes that are contagious. The novel engages with various theories of social contagion, including memetics, a proposed theory of cultural evolution and transmission that experienced widespread popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Though memetics specifically has been challenged and largely rejected as a scientific theory, the rise of internet “memes” and the overlap between those memes and other fads suggest that the discourse may still has value as an analytical framework, particularly in conversation with other models of contagion from the period. In Bellwether, fads and ideas spread outward through the population from a single source of infection—a bellwether, or the dominant sheep, whose behavior anticipates or directs the behaviors of the rest of the flock. Drawing on the work of meme and contagion theorists like Richard Dawkins, Richard Brodie, and Peta Mitchell, among others, this chapter considers the ways that Bellwether’s engagement with viral ideas positions the novel as a bellwether in its own right.
