What was the title

[james_davis_nicoll]

of that SF novel where it turned out mass murder was the solution?

Comments

[kedamono]

Starship Troopers?
Ender's Game?

[ba_munronoe]

I think I remember that one! I believe it had people in it.

[philrm]

Not for long!

[drplokta]

I seem to recall that it was written by a middle-aged white man, which should help to narrow it down.

[affreca]

Was it by David Weber? Or Jerry Pournelle?

[dragoness_e]

No (In Weber, mass murder is what the bad guys do, as one might expect).
Yes. (The Mercenary)

[philrm]

Ringworld Engineers?

[jhetley]

The Bible?

[redbird]

He did specify a novel, not an anthology.

[(Anonymous)]

Asimov had it down to only a few hundred people in the original Foundation trilogy - a surprisingly low count.

[jessie_c]

If This Goes On...

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know, but it was published by Baen.

[jreynolds197]

Deep Sky by Patrick Lee.

The conclusion of the series had a mysterious supertech-thingie that could detect bad people (maybe 4% of the population) and painlessly kill them. Everybody else, free of these bad people, would be able to produce utopia.

[ETA: At current world population, that would be a mere 308 million people. A small price to pay for utopia!]

Counterpoint: "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[dsrtao]

I really liked it up until that.

[autopope]

I know! I know! The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch! It even says so, right there in the title! /s

[(Anonymous)]

Warp Speed by Travis S Taylor.

[timgueugen]

Half the sci fi novels ever written it often seems.

I can think of two off-hand

[ed_rex]

The Fountainhead, by (of course), Ayn Rand. More recently, Neal Asher took Rand's relatively cerebral bloodlust and produced a work that is almost nothing but a purely pornographic splatterfest in The Departure.

I'm sure there are plenty more.

[dragoness_e]

by Jerry Pournelle, one of the John Christian Falkenberg mercenary stories--perhaps The Mercenary. Put me off the chararcter permanently. Unfortunately, I was too young to realize the problem was the author, not the character.

[nelc]

I don't know, I don't feel I can forgive Falkenberg for being persuaded into massacre on the word of an economist. Even less these days, as I imagine people like Paul Manafort using economic arguments as cover instead of sincerely believing them.

SPOILERS

[(Anonymous)]

James White's UNDERKILL does this.

It is the aliens' solution to Earth's ecological situation. We aren't consulted. We don't get to stop it.

Michael Moorcock's hero Corum cut a deal with the terribly powerful Lost Gods, according to a wiki (I dimly remember the book), to destroy the more evil gods in his universe, the Lords of Chaos. But they decided to wipe out the Lords of Law also. Oh, well.

Robert Carnegie

Re: SPOILERS

[ba_munronoe]

The Lords of Order could be dicks too if unconstrained, IIRC.

But evil Gods do prove something of a moral quandary: if you lock them up instead of killing them, then you have Sealed Evil in a Can, and you know some idiot is eventually going to let them out.

Hmm. Any fictional accounts of an Ancient Locked Away Evil that had undergone a change of heart during Its imprisonment and was no longer Evil when released?

I keep forgetting to put my name in here.

[(Anonymous)]

Robert Carnegie

[elusis]

The Expanse novel where OPA offshoots decide to hurl meteors at the Earth, which I recall really put you off that one, even though it was not exactly positioned as a heroic act.

[thornsilver]

Are we talking only humans or are aliens included? Because that is going to be a long list.

[frogworth]

Stone by Adam Roberts

[frogworth]

The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin also satisfies this description, for that matter

[errolwi]

Wess'Har Series by Karen Traviss. The final book is titled Judge, and it's being done to humans.

[legionseagle]

The Marching Morons ? (though perhaps not, since in universe they aren't one bit grateful to the guy who points out the solyion.)

[agharta75]

The Iron Dream.

[bunsen_h]

Are you sure it was a novel?

[(Anonymous)]

Judging by the replies here it's an entire sub-genre. Maybe even a full genre.

[(Anonymous)]

Was it the one with the war in it? Because I think that's kind of how war works sometimes.