[fishtacos]

I'm not well-versed enough on sci-fi to be able to connect more dots than this, but I am assuming these are common tropes.

The Mass Effect series describes the Reapers as (copied from masseffect.fandom.com - I <3 this game's lore):

"The Reapers are a highly-advanced machine race of synthetic-organic starships. The Reapers reside in dark space: the vast, mostly starless space between galaxies. They hibernate there, dormant for fifty thousand years at a time, before returning to the galaxy...the Reapers spare little concern for whatever labels other races choose to call them, and merely claim that they have neither beginning nor end."

The other pop-sci-fi analogue I can think of is The Borg.

[le-mark]

Fred Saberhagen Beserkers are the first instance of this concept I’m familiar with (1963)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(novel_series)