Roy Batty got my first Choice, Blackie DuQuesne.

Yama, against Sam, in 'Lord of Light'. I like him because he goes from antagonist to ally.

The Borshin, also from Zelazny, in 'Jack of Shadows'. Really creepy.

Stretch, the computer in Bester's 'Indian Giver'

Lincoln Powell, the esper cop who tries to nail Ben Reich in 'The Demolished Man'

And must mention Gulliver Foyle from 'The Stars My Destination', who was arguably his own antagonist.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove. And of course, the mad Doctor himself!

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

As long as we're covering nonhumans, how about The Blob, the Thing, the Pod People, the giant flying icicle The Doomsday Machine from Star Trek and the "happy spores" that made Spock fall in love, Godzilla, Dr. Frankenstein's poor misunderstood monster, the Triffids, and Saberhagen's Berserkers.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

D'oh! Double posted again.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Saberhagen gets credit for originality, but the idea has been improved on since. Benford's Mechs ("Galactic Center" series) are much more sensible, more versatile, and ultimately more dangerous Berserkers, even if (actually, because) they are not mindlessly omnicidal. Reynold's Inhibitors are also improved version of Berserkers, but they so utterly lack personality that I would not nominate them as Best Antagonists.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

It's why I don't think the Reavers deserve a spot. They're just not all that interesting.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Sorry, I misinterpreted "most successful" for "best".

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

I'm surprised no one has nominated Galactus from the Fantastic Four. The ultimate antagonist, he doesn't do something because its evil but because he wants to survive.

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Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, people want to be entertained.

"That hippy's starting to kick in!"

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

I'd be hard pressed to consider Kosh an antagonist. Ulkesh was a pain, but the Vorlons were definitely more constructive manipulators than they were destructive. That last bit with them annihilating whole worlds because of the Shadows' presence was certainly over the top, but still not entirely villainous. Shooting off a cannon to kill a fly. I think part of the reason things were finally forced to a head was because their very nature as First Ones made them entirely too dangerous to remain around the younger races. In their eyes, their actions were attempts to preserve what life they felt they could save from the Shadows' influence. They had an agenda, but if that's enough to call them antagonists, then there weren't many protagonists in the series.

As for them not taking it directly to the Shadows, Kosh's death kinda shed some light there. Despite their relative strength, the Vorlons weren't exactly confident the Shadows could be beaten. They were scared.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

I thought the Vorlons and Shadows were the ones who came after the First Ones, in the same way that the humans and Mimbari came after the Vorlons and the Shadows. Weren't there only about 12 First Ones left when Sheridan recruited them for the Shadow War?

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The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing,
The great violinist was bowing;
But how is the sage
To tell, from the page:
Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing?

No. The Shadows and the Vorlons were both of the "First One" generation. They were the only ones to stay in the galaxy as a race. The other "First One" races went beyond the Rim, with only isolated members of those races remaining. The point of gathering those 12 or so was that it was time for all of the First Ones to leave the galaxy to the next generation of races.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

Oh, I see.

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The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing,
The great violinist was bowing;
But how is the sage
To tell, from the page:
Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing?

Lorien claimed to be the first First One, followed by the Shadows, then the Vorlons soon after. IIRC.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Right. And he was the first of his race that "raised" the First Ones.

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

The Pak Protectors (were they Niven's? I forgot). They were aliens that are super-intelligent, but whose intelligence is fundmentally driven by a few basic instincts. One of which was to protect and establish the supremacy of their particular family of breeders (a prior stage of development where the species is unintelligent but can reproduce), which produced some rather spectacular and endless wars between them. Another, due to the fact that they evolved near a high-radiation star, was to ruthlessly weed out mutants from among their breeder populations.

In Nivens? book Protector, humans turn out to be a highly mutated lost colony of breeders, the original unintelligent stock deposited on earth by protectors who subsequently died, which sets up the plot for the conflict between them.

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http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

Yes, that was Niven.

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The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing,
The great violinist was bowing;
But how is the sage
To tell, from the page:
Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing?

Yup. Niven says in N-Space that what he wanted to do with the Protectors was A) to show that high intelligence does not necessarily lead to high morals, and B) to turn the "negatives" of old age (wrinkled skin, swollen joints, tooth loss, weak heart, lower sex drive) into biological positives.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Kai Winn and Dukat from DS9 (wished someone throw them out airlock).

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If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

http://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/