Progressors

Progressors in science fiction are people of an advanced space-faring civilization who facilitate progress of less advanced civilizations. It comes from a perspective very much the opposite of what motivates Star Trek's famous Prime Directive.

The term progressor was coined by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky for their Noon Universe (1961-1985), the term was mentioned in Hard to Be a God (1964), and later it (as well as a similar term regressor) was also used by Sergey Lukyanenko in the duology The Stars Are Cold Toys (1997), although with a somewhat different meaning. Doris Lessing explores the same themes in her Canopus in Argos series (1979-1983), but she calls it forced evolution. A similar concept is the basis of Iain M. Banks' Culture series (1987–); the organization carrying out the work is named Special Circumstances. David Brin's Uplift Universe novels (1980-1998) focus on the closely related phenomenon of biological uplift.

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