Trantor

Trantor is a fictional planet from the Foundation Saga novels by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Trantor is the capital of the Galactic Empire. Later, after the fall of the Empire, Trantor is isolated from all technological splendor, undergoing a process of involution in which its inhabitants, mostly agrarian, come to call the planet Hame, which according to Asimov is a distortion of the word "Home", which in English means "Home".

Situation in the novels

Trantor first appears in the short stories of the Foundation Saga. In its first appearance, Asimov places it at the center of the Milky Way, later correcting itself as a planet close enough to the Galactic Center to support human life. Trantor first appears in the novel A Pebble in the Sky (Pebble in the Sky).

It is the year 12.020 G.E. and Emperor Cleon I sits on the imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multifaceted capital of the Galactic Empire, 40 billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable cultural and technological complexity. However, Cleon knows that there are those who want to see him fall, whom he would destroy if he could read the future. In the same year 12.020 G.E. Hari Seldon arrives at Trantor to play his role in psychohistory, his great Theory of Historical Prediction. Hari possesses the prophetic force that makes him the most sought-after man in the Empire... the man who has the key to the future, an apocalyptic power to be known forever as the Foundation.

Prelude to the Foundation

Geography and history

The early history of Trantor is told in the novel The Currents of Space, which mentions the conversion of the five worlds of the Trantorian Republic into the Trantorian Confederation, and eventually the Trantorian Empire (It is evidently based on the model of the Roman Republic, which originally developed in the center of the Italian peninsula, to become the vast Roman Empire).

At the time of this novel, Trantor controls half the worlds in the galaxy, while the other half is divided into countless independent worlds and small empires, making the Trantorian ambassador a very important person. in these worlds.

Shortly thereafter, the conquest of the entire galaxy, with Trantor as the capital of the new Galactic Empire is a reality; the planet no longer sends ambassadors, but the royal governors exist. This situation is where A pebble in the sky takes place, which a few hundred years later continues the chronology of the saga.

Trantor is the capital of the first Galactic Empire. Its surface covers 194,000,000 km² (130% of the Earth's surface) The entire planet is a large built city, covered 100% by the titanium of its buildings, except for the gardens of the Imperial Palace , which are the only forest point on the entire planet. It is an enormous Metropolis, an ecumenopolis that, given the obvious lack of space on the surface, also reaches a great depth of the ground. Another reason why it is built at such low depths is with the aim of using the thermal energy given off by the planet's core to power the city's generators. At the height of the Empire, its total population numbered 45 billion people.

It is interesting to quote the urban planning theory called Ekistics, Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis predicted in 1968 that the human race on Earth would reach zero population growth by 2100 when it reached 50,000,000,000 people in a global ecumenopolis based on fusion power (although Second Foundation mentions a figure ten times that of the administrators alone), a population density of 232 people per km² (for comparison, New York City in real life has an estimate of 10,604 people per square kilometer). Its population is dedicated almost entirely to the administration of the Empire or the maintenance of the planet itself, it is the administrative and bureaucratic center. As a consequence of being fully built, it is dependent on outside supplies for its survival. Trantor illustrates the mentality of human beings that begins in The Steel Vaults, where human technology completely encloses the population, isolating them from the outside, both space and world. fresh air.

Another notable building is the Trantor Library (also referred to as the Imperial Library, Trantor University Library or Galactic Library), in which librarians are dedicated to storing and cataloging humanity's knowledge, making it accessible from computer terminals. It described Trantor as "the center of Imperial Government for countless generations, and being situated in the central regions of the galaxy among the most densely populated and industrially advanced worlds, it is the wealthiest and densest population core on earth. humanity has known". One Trantorian day is equal to 1.08 Galactic Standard Days.

Subsequently, the Empire begins to crumble and around 260 EF, a rebel leader known as Gilmer attempts to become Emperor, and in the process sacks Trantor, forcing the Imperial family to flee to the nearby world of Delicass, which would be renamed New Trántor. After the looting the population dropped drastically from 40 billion to less than 100 million. Most of the buildings and domes are destroyed, and over the next two centuries Trantor's metal is sold, and farmers reclaim more and more fertile land for their farms. A dialect of the galactic language even develops, and people rename the planet hame, similar to home 'home'.

As revealed to the reader in Second Foundation, not all of these farmers are what they seem, as Trantor is the headquarters of the Second Foundation, which resides in the Library of Galactica compound, whose dependencies remain well preserved (one of the few buildings that survived the looting); the peasants deeply respect the members of the organization, even without really knowing what they are: the psychic powers of the members of the Second Foundation make up for the problem of the lack of technology, especially with their capacity for mind control. The planet of the Runaway saga responds with the same name as a tribute.

Food production

According to the original Foundation Trilogy (1951), Asimov states (via Encyclopedia Galactica), "the impossibility of proper administration... under the uninspired leadership of later emperors was a factor considerable in the Fall". To satisfy the needs and whims of the population, food from twenty agricultural worlds is brought in by tens of thousands of ships, fleets larger than any armada ever built by the Imperium. "Its reliance on the outer worlds for food, and indeed for all the necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor aware of this, and Imperial policy became little more than the protection of Trantor's delicate jugular vein" (Galactic Encyclopedia).

In Prelude to Foundation (1989), Asimov indicates that this was not always the case: Originally, most of Trantor's basic food needs were met by the "vast farms of microorganisms" of Trantor. Yeast tanks and algae farms produced basic nutrients, which were then processed with artificial flavors into tasty foods. The underground farms, however, relied entirely on the care provided by tik-toks (lesser robots), and their destruction following an aborted uprising left the imperial capital largely dependent on food brought in from other worlds. It is mentioned in Foundation Limits that algae growth on Trantor is considered a totally unsuitable food source, so it is possible that some of the later emperors tried to rectify the situation with limited success. Trantor, of course, can once again grow its own food after Gilmer's sack, with the increasing amount of usable land as the metal on the surface was removed and sold.

Races on Trantor

Although set in the future 22,500 years from now, there was much racial intermarriage and most people were multiracial, according to Asimov, both in the Galactic Empire and on Trantor, there were still some recognizable populations primarily descendants of the original breeds. on earth. Those we call Caucasians were called Westerners, those we call Asians were called Orientals, and those we call Blacks were called Southerners. No one could remember why these names were used because no one could remember human origins on Earth. Seldon himself openly wondered why there were no 'northerners'.