It's the future of a civilization. A new dawn has come for the people! Hunger, War, and Poverty have been eliminated. Want and Desire is a thing of the past. There are Crystal Spires and Togas in our cities!
But...something's wrong.
This civilization is lacking. Yes, they have everything they could ever want. But there's something else that's missing. Everything that made life livable and full of fun in the past has gone by the wayside. No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture? Yeah, but this is where the culture that once dominated the civilization has faded away. For cerebral "cultures", there isn't even Incredibly Lame Fun anywhere. The "entertainment" has no value. Everything is dry, logical, strict, and clean. There's structure where it doesn't need to be. Mindfulness is abound, without regard for whether it's necessary.
Other times, their culture has either, again, faded away, naturally, or has been engineered out of them, whether by choice or by outside influence, or even by fanatics that espouse The Evils of Free Will.
Sometimes, someone may realize that their world has strayed away from what they used to be, and that everything that came before has more oomph than what they have now.
Other times, the civilization has lost its capacity for anything, because they have done everything, as in, there is nothing else left to do!
An Indubitably Uninteresting Individual may come from this kind of civilization. An Easily Swayed Population may overlap with this trope as well. A civilization of this type may have also distilled their food into the basic elements necessary to sustain life, but without the taste and texture necessary to enjoy it. Equally, the civilization may also have moved into an Ascetic Aesthetic, with their architecture, internal design, and clothing further showcasing how sterile and overly-lacking they've become. They may also be a Mechanistic Alien Culture.
A subtrope of Creative Sterility. Sister Trope to Crapsack World and Crapsaccharine World.
Examples:
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Comic Books
- In Transformers: The Wreckers (a comic taking place roughly the same time as Beast Machines), it's heavily implied that the Transformer creator-god Primus felt the Transformers had become one of these and so deliberately allowed the Quintessons to launch several schemes in order to jumpstart evolution anew.
- Marvel Comics: Part of the reason the Kree Supreme Intelligence has such interest in Earth is that it has come to the conclusion that the Kree Imperium, as powerful as it is, has become stagnant and an evolutionary dead-end. So desperate is the Supreme Intelligence to jumpstart evolution, intuition, and innovation that it has on several occasions engineered Back from the Brink situations in the hopes this would force the Kree as a whole to rekindle their fire. Captain Mar-Vell, despite officially being an exiled traitor, is exactly the kind of person the Supreme Intelligence wishes more Kree were like.
Films — Animated
- WALL•E has the Axiom, a gigantic luxury cruise liner in space; ships like the Axiom were used to evacuate all of humanity with the promise of coming back to Earth after it had been cleared of the massive heaps of garbage that had piled up. With the help of robots to do all the manual labor and levitating hover chairs initially designed to aid less-mobile people in getting around, humanity has reached a peak...but it's resulted in a Big, Fat Future where everyone is, in essence, a massive infant: they eat liquid meals from cups, stare at screens all day (to the point of talking to one another via video chat when they're literally sitting next to one another), and have no imagination or creativity. WALL•E's presence helps to shake a few residents from their stupor. By the end of the film, Captain McCrea summons the strength to walk to defeat AUTO, and other humans begin doing the same, freeing themselves from reliance on technology and starting a new era.
Films — Live-Action
- One of the main elements of Demolition Man: Despite humanity reaching a peaceful apex, everything that was once enjoyed is now considered evil and harmful, and is thus banned. Emotions are kept in check, food portions are similarly kept small, everything is spick-and-span, and entertainment is kitschy, overly safe, and droll. The humor of our then-current culture, viewed through this futuristic lens, is that it's treated as if it happened ten thousand years, or more, ago, when it only happened 3 to 4 decades prior.
- Invoked with the Vogons, but without the cleanliness, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the cities of Vogsphere consist of nothing but brutalistic, bureaucratic office buildings (that can also launch and be used as spacecraft), and the population does nothing but work, and even simple actions are dictated by the filling and filing-away of documents. One Vogon is offended when he discovers from his underling that the crew of the Heart of Gold didn't file the proper paperwork to activate their ship's FTL drive. Later, Arthur Dent is able to save Trillian from being fed to the Bugblatter Beast of Traal by filling out a document to free her but first has to go through all the steps (including waiting in a long line/queue). The culture of the planet, as well as the general appearance of the Vogons in this version, is explained away by a plant-like creature that zips out of the ground and slaps the offending individual on the face, with an appendage that looks like a fly-swatter, whenever they have an idea or thought.
- Mon Oncle: A meta example, about a closer future and advancement than most; The film is meant as a commentary on how post-war France in the 1950s was developing into a hyper-modern/futuristic sterile shadow of itself. The house of the Arpels, heavily featured as the centerpiece of the film, is modern in design, but is also very user-unfriendly; controls have no labels, devices are not easy to recognize, the furniture is as uncomfortable as it looks. It's spick-and-span, but is also very imposing and brutalistic; everything has been distilled into its most basic forms, without regard for visual warmth and coziness. The Arpels, barring their son, Gerard, are just as uptight, hollow, inflexible, and insincere as their house.
- Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: Mars' child portion of their civilization has becomes this, according to their 800-year-old sage, Chochem. Their knowledge is fed directly into their brain by machines, but are distracted by Earth television broadcasts because of how uninteresting and fun-lacking their culture is. To bring some into their lives, a few martian explorers travel to Earth and kidnap Santa Claus. Voldar, one of the military leaders, is more of a General Ripper and a traditionalist, thinking that this would undermine their glory.
- THX 1138: In an underground, futuristic civilization, the concepts of family and love are forbidden. People live in sterile apartments with roommates chosen by government. They wear the same white uniform, their heads are shaved and their "names" are three random letters with four digits. The closest they have to sex is watching erotic holographies while engaging with a pumping device. Worst of all, they have to take daily doses of drugs that suppress their feelings and keep them compliant. THX, the eponymous protagonist, sets the plot in motion when his roommate swaps their medication and they fall in love.
Literature
- The World State in Brave New World has shaped society into being thoroughly uncreative in the name of maximizing efficiency. All popular activities are based solely on sensory pleasures (scent concerts, drug-fueled orgies, etc.), high art is non-existent, classic literature can only be found in "savage reservations," and anyone who's too nonconformist for their own good gets Reassigned to Antarctica. In fact, a significant portion of the population is literally incapable of higher thought, being bred for (un)intelligence as servant castes.
- Paris in the Twentieth Century, originally written by Jules Verne in 1863, depicts the year 1960 where artistic creativity has been smothered by emphasis on cold science and commerce.
- The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles: Greenland City represents the end state of human advancement. They've discovered and invented everything that's possible, both in the spheres of science and culture. They have no new fiction because they've literally already told every possible story. (For example, they specifically mention that they made an extended version of The Wire that ran for 65 seasons.) Sports are all they have left to stave off endless boredom: human competition generates enough randomness that even their advanced science can't predict the outcomes of games.
- Vampire Hunter D: The first book implies that Creative Sterility led to the fall of the Vampire civilization and the general state of the world being overrun by monsters, bandits, and lost Magitek. The Vampires ran everything perfectly for thousands of years... and had no idea what to do after that. It's further implied the fall came about because the Vampires couldn't think of what to do next.
- The One State in We, where art is subjugated to cold logic and pro-government propaganda, and the scientists are working on, among other things, a means of destroying the part of the brain responsible for imagination. Sex is still encouraged — the State's official position is that every citizen belongs sexually to every other citizen — but strictly rationed; you need to pay for it with tickets from your ration book. The residential buildings are almost all windows so that everyone can see what everyone else is doing (when they're not lowering the blinds to have sex).
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who: On the Doctor's home planet, Gallifrey, the society of Time Lords is one of the most advanced in the universe, being so knowledgeable about time travel that they've become, as the name implies, the overseers of keeping time itself stable. However, they've stagnated over the years and are holed up in Sisyphean bureaucracy and a xenophobic attitude towards other civilizations, motivating the Doctor to steal a TARDIS from a museum and flee throughout time and space, kickstarting the events of the series. When the Doctor returns to Gallifrey as a wanted criminal in "The Deadly Assassin", most of the Time Lords are so interchangeable that he easily masquerades among them simply by stealing a set of robes and keeping his head low.
- A variation occurs in the final season of The Good Place, when the main characters finally reach Heaven. As might be expected, it's a world where you can have anything and everything you could possibly want just by thinking about it. Everyone's a Reality Warper, and everyone is joyful. All the time. The group quickly learns that eons of utopian indulgence has transformed the residents into simple-minded, blithering morons incapable of imagination and thought—with nothing to motivate them, they've become mush-brained drones who indulge in whatever petty pleasure they imagine, only to lose interest in a matter of seconds. The only person to escape this fate is Hypatia, a Greek philosopher who's managed to keep her mind somewhat intact, but she's still essentially a kindergartner in terms of intelligence and attention span (to the point where she loses track of what she's saying in the middle of her sentences). The main characters eventually save the Good Place by creating a door that leads to permanent Cessation of Existence, giving people the choice to peacefully and painlessly end their afterlives whenever they desire. With something to look forward to again, the denizens of the Good Place have meaning in their lives once more and become truly happy.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager: The Q Continuum is so advanced, they've become near godlike. And, according to their most notorious member, are also stymied by a lack of imagination and eons of stagnation. Fridge Brilliance begins to set in when one recalls that during their first encounter, Q gleefully calls Picard "a veritable fountain of good ideas", and has been pestering humanity, particularly Picard and Janeway, ever since.
- In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Virtuoso", the Voyager crew encounters the Qomar, a race who are brilliant when it comes to mathematics and science, but limited in terms of creativity, to the point that they have never developed the concept of music. Consequently, the Doctor becomes a huge celebrity to them just because he is capable of singing and almost considers leaving Starfleet to capitalize on this. Eventually, one of them, Tincoo, attempted to compose her own song, but the resulting composition, while extremely popular with her peers because of its mathematical design, was tuneless and unlikely to be appreciated by anyone else. The song also happened to be unsingable by most species, as it used notes well above the normal vocal range; Tincoo had to design a dedicated hologram in order to perform it.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40,000: Justified with the Eldar, who need to exercise great caution in expressing or feeling emotions due to the danger of falling to the Chaos god/dess Slaanesh (millennia of unrestrained Eldar hedonism resulted in its creation). The wandering Harlequins who put on theatrical performances depicting the fall of the Eldar take even greater precautions, and the one entrusted with playing the role of Slaanesh is at constant risk of having their soul devoured.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- The civilization of the unsundered past was incredibly advanced by the standards of the present. People could live for an age. War, famine, and disease were practically unknown, and technology was so advanced that the buildings of the city people once lived in could survive anything short of a planetary-level natural disaster. But while creativity was celebrated through the use of creation magicks, self-expression was not. The members of this civilization hid their faces behind masks and concealed their figures inside robes and there was an intense focus on working toward the betterment of the whole and the star itself. There are also implications that this society was insular and isolated as a whole, as the researchers of Elpis are stumped by problems that the globe-trotting Warrior of Light solves, implying a level of Creative Sterility that was slowly stagnating their society.
- In Endwalker, the Endsinger shows the Scions a similar civilization called the Plenty, which eliminated all suffering. But in doing so, they eliminated all desire and ambition. The entire race goes mad and is Driven to Suicide when Meteion innocently asks what brings them happiness and they realize that they could not give her an answer. All of this strongly implies that the ancient mankind would have eventually wiped itself out in a similar way even if it hadn't experienced the Final Days.
- Stellaris: The Fallen Empires embody this trait to a T, being unwilling to do or accomplish anything other than self-defense until the end of the game.
Western Animation
- Invader Zim: The Irken are a race of insectoid aliens born in tubes via some form of cloning, and unable to survive without being paired to a device called a PAK. The PAK is where the actual Irken's mind resides, and is also programmed for their specific class/job, though they can be re-encoded at will by those higher ranking. They're only supposed to love war, snacks, and their Tallest, and those who are especially defective are put through an 'existence evaluation', the price of failure is having their PAK erased and their existence wiped from the Irken collective memory banks. Their tech seems impressive, until you learn most of it was actually designed or built by the Vortians, another race they worked with and eventually enslaved.
- She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Horde Prime's race has an advanced technology that allows him to destroy planets, teleporting and transferring his mind to other bodies. His culture, however, couldn't be more sterile, for it's basically a cult of him. His people are clones of himself, programmed even before birth to devote their lives to him; they dress in the same uniform and are not allowed to have names, feelings, or think by themselves. If one clone does any of these forbidden things (like Hordak), he has his memories erased and is submitted to a torturing ceremony known as "reconditioning".
- Steven Universe: The Gem civilization is an intergalactic empire where each gem is created for a specific utilitarian purpose and is not allowed to deviate in any way. The only forms of art allowed are those that venerate the civilization's rulers, reinforcing the status quo. The opportunity for self-expression is one of the reasons Gems were drawn to Rose Quartz's rebellion. By Steven Universe: Future, the Crystal Gems have successfully ended this period of Gem life, and the planet is a much happier, stabler, and flourishing civilization as a result.
