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The act of creating life is a central part of many works. This goes for creating life in general and for intelligent life, biological or otherwise, in particular. The act can be portrayed in many ways, such as:
- Creating Life Is Awesome
- Creating Life Is Bad (also known as Playing God)
- Creating Life Is Unforeseen
- Creation Myth
- Creation Story
- Deity of Human Origin
Examples that fit squarely in one of these subtropes go on that page only.
The Frankenstein genre of this trope family usually fall squarely in the Creating Life Is Bad camp. Usually, but not always.
Note that this trope only comes into effect when creating new life in a manner other than the old-fashioned way. For that, see Pregnancy Tropes.
Examples of Creating Life include:
Film - Live Action[]
- In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Chancellor Palpatine makes a claim that the Sith Lord Darth Plagueis has the ability to create life.
Literature[]
- In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an alien civilization created at least one sentient supercomputer, Deep Thought, for the purpose of answering philosophical questions regarding the meaning of life, the universe and everything.
- In the novel Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus from 1818 and 1831, it is left ambiguous whether creating the creature was actually a bad thing or not. The creature suffers (and subsequently cause suffering to his creator), not because it was created but because the creator abandoned it afterwards. The story can be read in in many ways, unlike most of the (usually extremely heavy-handed) genre it spawned.
- Is Doctor Frankenstein a bad scientist (who did a bad experiment), a bad father (who abandoned the son he had created), or a bad God (who cast out his creation at first provocation... Just like the Yahveh of The Bible, but unlike the Allah of The Quran - who instead forgave Adam and sent him out as a prophet rather than an outcast)? Well, that's something you'll just have to decide for yourself. Most re-tellings of the story will make the choice for you, however, by simply declaring that Science Is Bad, period, and putting Always Chaotic Evil stamps all over the place.
Video Games[]
- In Alpha Centauri, your civilization will create intelligent life (unless you actively avoid those tech trees), and this is not part of the characterization of your faction. You may be awesome or horrible, honest or hypocrite, religious or unproblematically secular... In either case, you will create sentient life.
- In Luminous Arc 2 Mage Queen Elicia reason that she was cast to Arthania is because she attempt to create life to replace the children that she couldn't save as she was once the nurse who saved so many life.
- Sim Life is all about creating life. The player plays the role of Gaia herself, guiding the force of evolution from single cell organisms to various kinds of civilizations.
- In the fourth and fifth game of Quest for Glory, we have Scientists creating life, Frankenstein style. While the ones in the fifth game falls squarely in the traditional Creating Life Is Bad camp, the one in the fourth game is portrayed as morally neutral. Trying to do the right thing in ways that are sometimes misguided but not overly so.
Western Animation[]
- In Adventure Time, Princess Bubblegum invokes this trope when she tries to create an heir to the kingdom. Despite her mild intentions, her son Lemongrab basically ends up as a brain-damaged stress-case with anger management issues and an inability to read social cues. Although he's not evil, she refers to him as a failed experiment because of his serious mental issues. However, she doesn't seem very willing to treat him with any sort of respect or kindness, so the direct cause of all of his problems remains ambiguous.