It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.

March 22, 2024 4:59 PM

What are some examples in science fiction or fantasy where a society has reached some kind of stagnation for a long time, and a conqueror or leader destroys the society, scattering it, and is viewed as a villain - but ultimately it is for the best as humanity now is free to develop again?

Some examples: Abner Doon in Orson Scott Card's Worthing Saga, Meina Gladstone in Dan Simmons' Hyperion.

posted by dmd to Media & Arts (19 answers total)

“For the best” is debatable, but from a certain perspective this is the plot of the Dune series.
posted by mekily at 5:01 PM on March 22, 2024 [10 favorites]

Clifford Simak's The City describes in part an ant civilization that was formed when a human kicked an ant nest, forcing them to develop coping strategies and ultimately technology; centuries later an observer finds the Ant City has taken over a large area and there is a memorial statue of a human foot at the place of the instigation.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:23 PM on March 22, 2024 [6 favorites]

Larry Niven's "The Mote in God's Eye" kind of touches on this.
posted by neilbert at 6:22 PM on March 22, 2024

Arthur C Clarke's the City and the Stars.

Spoilers abound behind the link.

For 'a sense of wonder' and deep time, no other book had the impact on early teenage me this book did — and he wrote two distinct versions of it!
posted by jamjam at 6:32 PM on March 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

mekily: "“For the best” is debatable, but from a certain perspective this is the plot of the Dune series."

Specifically Leto II's "Golden Path" plan in the later novels -- see The Scattering.

It also made me think of the motivations of the League of Shadows in the Nolan Batman trilogy (they failed obvs but claimed to have been successful in the past -- the fall of Rome, the Bubonic Plague, Great Fire of London, etc.).

Less grimdark: WALL-E, EVE, and the Captain disrupt the cloistered space-cruising stagnation of humanity on the Axiom to bring them back to real work and honest living on a reborn Earth.

Some relevant TVTropes for more examples:

It Is Beyond Saving

Restart the World
posted by Rhaomi at 7:10 PM on March 22, 2024 [2 favorites]

That is similar to Thanos in the MCU Infinity saga of movies. He is attempting to kill/remove/destroy half of all life in the universe in order to remove privation as a thing that prevents life from thriving.
posted by griffey at 7:46 PM on March 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

Ruthanna Emrys' A Half-Built Garden, maybe? It's a First Contact story crossed with a post-apocalypse story; it's set in a future where our environment is trashed but there are communities of humans still hanging in there, and some aliens land and basically say "hey! Great to meet you, welcome to the galactic family! .....Oh, by the way, your planet is toast and we're going to ship you all off to our collective space colonies and disassemble your planet for spare parts!"

Caveat that the aliens aren't 100% portrayed as the villains - it's more like, some might be good, but some might not, and some might team up with the pretentious capitalist douchebags who are the REAL villains - but maybe some aliens will let us stay down here on Earth where we've created these anarcho-feminist utopias, and maybe some aliens will want to join us, yay.

(Not making ANY of that up, by the way.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:48 PM on March 22, 2024 [4 favorites]

This happens in "The Risen Empire" by Scott Westerfeld, where a certain group's ability to extend human life indefinitely causes stagnation.

It's an absolutely amazing book.
posted by Zumbador at 9:47 PM on March 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

One could make an argument that Moorcock's Elric saga - be it the fate of stagnant and decadent Melniboné, or that entire universe is considered - but whether it's 'for the best' is ambiguous.
posted by cobaltnine at 10:06 PM on March 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

The movie Zardoz sort of fits the bill.
posted by ninazer0 at 10:39 PM on March 22, 2024 [3 favorites]

I think Le Guin's Hainish cycle goes through this -- IIRC City of Illusions, set on an Earth dominated by aliens who sabotage all attempts by humans to make cultures bigger or more sophisticated than a folksy lodge in the woods, is set later than more famous works like The Dispossessed or The Left Hand Of Darkness. I can't remember too much about the end of City but I think there's an element of "we're so back" to it.

(Also, kind of a sideways example, but I think the big thing at the end of Watchmen feels like... not this trope exactly, but perhaps a closely related one.)
posted by dick dale the vampire at 11:08 PM on March 22, 2024

The protagonists are not so clearly "early villains, later heroes", but Lillith's Brood by Octavia Butler is all about aliens saving humanity from themselves. Some human characters welcome this, some do not, and whether the "saving" is necessary is ambiguous. But there is definitely a human point of view in the trilogy that thinks that without the intervention humanity is doomed. Even if it doesn't meet your strict criteria it's an awesome story and well worth reading.
posted by underclocked at 1:00 AM on March 23, 2024 [2 favorites]

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Esbach does this to an extent, with some interesting twists around who's responsible for the destruction and why.
posted by terretu at 2:19 AM on March 23, 2024

“For the best” and “for humanity” also debatable but without going too close to spoilers I thought “The Girl With All the Gifts” did this remarkably well. Apocalyptic Zombie genre.
posted by like_neon at 6:18 AM on March 23, 2024 [1 favorite]

Walter Jon Williams’ Dread Empires Fall, askew.
posted by clew at 9:52 AM on March 23, 2024

I hope you won't mind a little self-promo, but in my story "A Stranger Goes Ashore" a seafaring civilization desperately sends out ships to find habitable land as their own island undergoes an ecological collapse. Every mission ends in failure, until one sailor makes a grim discovery that might ensure their survival.
posted by itstheclamsname at 6:50 AM on March 24, 2024 [2 favorites]

Captain Kirk did this like half a dozen times in the original Star Trek series
posted by Jacqueline at 9:49 PM on March 24, 2024

That is why Eternity must end in Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:57 PM on March 24, 2024

Safehold series by David Webber
posted by billsaysthis at 9:51 PM on March 25, 2024