Fungal Imaginaries: The Reconfiguration of Post-Pandemic Society in Severance (2018) and The Last of Us (2023)

This chapter considers two texts, Ling Ma’s 2018 novel Severance and the HBO adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (2023) as emblematic of a new relationship to the global situation in our post-pandemic moment. Focusing specifically on rhizomic networks and the fungal nature of various types of connection, it suggests that both works offer us macro and micro-political understandings that showcase the sublime and complex difficulties we face when attempting to integrate into a world that is moving at such great pace. While offering a word of caution about some of these emerging fungal networks in areas like economics and disinformation, it ends with a reflection on the hope we might draw from new possibilities of connection and collaboration that the pandemic has, ultimately, forced upon us.