Fantasy & sci-fi are chock full of hidden civilizations: Opar, several versions of Atlantis, and so forth. Imagine, if you will, that these societies existed in the real world, and decided to reveal themselves to the rest of humanity. Which would do best? Which would do worst?
(Assume, for the sake of discussion, that only the most basic elements of the fantasy city are brought into existence. In other words, if you name Themyscira–the post-crisis name of Wonder Woman’s Paradise Island–you have a nation of high-tech Amazons, one of whom has super-powers, but there are no other superheroes.)
Hmmm…so we’re not counting hidden “societies,” that are too dispersed or too small to count as “civilizations,” right? So the Gargoyles are out?
Assuming you mean the 90s cartoon, I’d say they count; they have a culture.
In Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson/Alpha & Omega world the fae came out about 20 years ago. They engineered one of the gnomes to be accused of murder. The victim was murdered with a pair of steel garden shears. During the trial the prosecution tried to make the accused hold the shears. He can’t, and he drops his glamour then, showing he was a gnome. By “now”, 20 years later, much of the fae live on fae reservations, there is prejudice against them, some fae pass as human by using glamour. So the coming out was successful in that the humans didn’t slaughter them, but living with people is not great.
Books
Mercy Thomson series:
Moon Called
Blood Bound
Iron Kissed
Bone Crossed
Alpha & Omega series:
Anthology On the Prowl: Alpha and Omega
Cry Wolf
Hunting Ground
In the first Harry Potter book, Hagrid explains to Harry that wizards keep their world secret from muggles because if muggles knew about them, “They’d want magical solutions to their problems!” Well, why not? In muggle society there are many people who use their talents and education to solve people’s problems; they’re called “professionals” – doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants, architects, etc. – and they earn a lot of money and enjoy high social status and respect. If the wizards came out of hiding, they could establish themselves as a new professional class.
Well, how about the immortals from the Highlander franchise? They sort of are already assimilated into whatever human culture they’re currently living in though…
“Do best” by what standard? Like, would I prefer to live there rather than here? Or, could they kick humanity’s ass and take over earth? Or, they have hotter chicks?
Gorilla City from the DC universe. Only Flash knows it exists (or maybe Batman as well, I’m not sure).
Anyway, they are apes that are way advanced than humans. If they decide to go public, they’ll probably have to defend themselves from every nation on Earth who would want to seize the apes’ technology for themselves. So it’s best they stay hidden.
On the other hand, they are so far ahead of the humans and mostly benevolent, the gorillas could probably rule the world and bring peace. Of course there’s always Gorilla Grodd to spoil everything.
The various undersea Atlantises would do best, I think, because they are more like on another world than say islands or lost continents/valleys/caverns. They would be more able to hold their own on a mutual exchange basis. Even Laputa would be too accesible, whereas deep underwater is hard.
The Smurfs would be able to obtain a restraining order against Gargamel. Smurfette would get the hell out and pursue a solo career, though.