Stories Without Villains

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

Can you think of any SF/F stories (in any media) where there is no actual villain, nor even a main antagonist? I'm sure I've read/watched a couple but cannot think of any off the top of my head.

 

[Ursa major]

It's a pity you weren't looking for (the absence of) villeins...

...as you could have serfed the web for that.​

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*gets coat*

 

[paranoid marvin]

Green Eggs and Ham?

 

[Montero]

Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard. It is about good government and unequal friendship. There are political opponents, but they are not villains and not really a main antagonist. The relationship between the Emperor and his secretary is the core of the book. There are various awkward people, well intentioned but unhelpful people, corruption pops up from time to time, but it is not the classic big villain type book.

 

[Vince W]

Rendezvous With Rama by A.C. Clarke and Ringworld by Larry Niven. Both are BDO stories without a villain.

 

[Vince W]

The Martian by Andy Weir.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Star Crossed by Ben Bova All you really had was crooked tv producer but he wasn't really evil or a villain , He was incompetent and had a very bad gambling habit .

 

[farntfar]

Several John Wyndham novels have no real villains:
Chocky
Trouble with lichen
have difficult situations but no villain as such.
Stowaway to Mars doesn't really have a villain, although some unpleasant or psychotic machines.
Also a number of his short stories.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has the Vogons and later the Crikkit robots, but are they really villains? Otherwise the villain is simply circumstance.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Several John Wyndham novels have no real villains:
Chocky
Trouble with lichen
have difficult situations but no villain as such.
Stowaway to Mars doesn't really have a villain, although some unpleasant or psychotic machines.
Also a number of his short stories.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has the Vogons and later the Crikkit robots, but are they really villains? Otherwise the villain is simply circumstance.

The antagonist in HHGTTG (and in much of Douglas Adams' work) was bureaucracy. The Vogons were merely an extension of that; not evil, just entirely devoid of conscience.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Close Encounters, Gravity, 2001/2010.

 

[Swank]

ET, all Clarke novels, Destination Void, Counting Heads, Halo, Anathem, State of the Art, Door Into Summer, Pushing Ice.

 

[BAYLOR]

Journey to The Center of Earth by Jules Verne
The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

[Wayne Mack]

How about Isaac Asimov's robot stories? They are primarily logic puzzles.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Possessed by Arthur C Clark
The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clark
The Star Beast by Robert A Heinlein

 

[THX1138]

The Last Question by Issac Asimov

 

[Swank]

So: Tons of SF stories.

 

[The Big Peat]

The main problem in Mercedes Lackey's Mage Storms trilogy is a natural disaster. There are villains, but they are something of a sideshow.

The villain in the first quarter of Katherine Kerr's Deverry Cycle is something of a sideshow compared to the need for self-realisation on behalf of the characters (which is also true of most of Lackey's Last Herald-Mage).

 

[BAYLOR]

The Man Who Lost the Sea by Theodore Sturgeon

 

[Vince W]

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I don’t think the sharks can be considered villains.

 

[Swank]

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I don’t think the sharks can be considered villains.

Is Old Man SF because of the nanotube fishing line he's using, or F because the fish is a Norse god in disguise?