|
Trantor is a fictional planet in Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' Series and ''Empire'' series of science fiction novels. Trantor was first mentioned in Asimov's short story, "Black Friar of the Flame", later collected in ''The Early Asimov, Volume 1''. It was described as a human-settled planet in the part of the galaxy not ruled by an intelligent reptilian race (later defeated). Later, Trantor gained prominence when the 1940s ''Foundation'' series first appeared in print (in the form of short stories). Asimov described Trantor as being in the centre of the galaxy. In later stories he acknowledged the growth in astronomical knowledge by retconning its position to be as close to the galactic centre as was compatible with human habitability. The first time it was acknowledged in novel form was in ''Pebble in the Sky''.〔(Pebble in the Sky ) By Isaac Asimov, page 27〕 ==Geography and history== The earlier history of Trantor is recapitulated in ''The Currents of Space'', mentioning the five worlds of the Trantorian Republic growing into the Trantorian Confederation and then Trantorian Empire (evidently modelled on the Roman Republic, originally ruling only part of central Italy, developing into the vast Roman Empire). At the time when ''Currents'' takes place, Trantor controls about half of the worlds in the Galaxy, while the other half is divided into innumerable independent worlds and miniature empires – which naturally makes a Trantorian Ambassador a person of great consequence on any of the still-independent worlds. Later on, conquest of the entire galaxy made the Galactic Empire, with Trantor as its capital planet, a reality; the planet no longer sending out ambassadors, but only governors to royal subject worlds. This situation had already existed for thousands of years at the time of ''Pebble in the Sky'', the next chronological book on this timeline. Trantor is depicted as the capital of the first Galactic Empire. Its land surface of 194,000,000 km² (75,000,000 miles², 130% of Earth land area)〔(The Foundation Trilogy ) By Isaac Asimov, page 13〕 was, with the exception of the Imperial Palace,〔(Foundation and Empire ) By Isaac Asimov, page 73〕 entirely enclosed in artificial domes.〔(Note reference to domes in the "Product Description" )〕〔Similar to the Earth depicted in Asimov's "Caves of Steel"〕 It consisted of an enormous metropolis (an ecumenopolis) that stretched deep underground, and was home to a population of 45,000,000,000 (45 billion) human inhabitants at its height,〔although this is given as 400 billion in second foundation the third book of the trilogy. It is interesting to note that in his theory of city planning called Ekistics, Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis in 1968 CE predicted that the human race on Earth would by 2100 CE reach zero population growth at a population of 50,000,000,000 in a worldwide ecumenopolis powered by fusion energy.〕 (although the Second Foundation mentions a figure ten times that of administrators alone), a population density of 232 per km² (600 per mile², similar to the current population density of Germany or Connecticut). Its population was devoted almost entirely to either administration of the Empire or to maintenance of the planet itself, including energy provided by "heatsinks" (geothermal core taps) and production of food via underground farming and yeasts, as described in ''Prelude to Foundation''. The ''Encyclopedia Galactica'' states further on Trantor: "As the centre of the Imperial Government for unbroken hundreds of generations and located, as it was, toward the central regions of the Galaxy among the most densely populated and industrially advanced worlds of the system, it could scarcely help being the densest and richest clot of humanity the Race had ever seen." A Trantorian day lasted 1.08 Galactic Standard Days.〔(Foundation's Edge ) By Isaac Asimov, page 98〕 One of the prominent features of Trantor was the Library of Trantor (variously referred to as the Imperial Library, the University of Trantor Library, and the Galactic Library), in which librarians index the entirety of human knowledge by walking up to a different computer terminal every day and resuming where the previous librarian left off. Near Trantor were twenty agricultural worlds which supplied food which the world-city could not grow for itself, and the "Summer Planets", where the Emperor went for vacation.〔(Foundation and Empire )〕 Around 260 FE, a rebel leader named Gilmer attempted a coup, in the process sacking Trantor〔Turtledove, Harry. "Trantor Falls." ''Foundation's Friends'', edited by Martin H. Greenberg. Tor, 1989.〕 and forcing the Imperial family to flee to the nearby world of Delicass, renamed Neotrantor. After the sack, the population dwindled rapidly from 40 billion to less than 100 million. Most of the buildings on Trantor were destroyed during the sack, and over the course of the next two centuries the metal on Trantor was gradually sold off, as farmers uncovered more and more soil to use in their farms. Eventually the farmers grew to become the sole recognised inhabitants of the planet, and the era of Trantor as the central world of the galaxy came to a close. It began to develop a dialect very different from Galactic Standard Speech, and the people unofficially renamed their planet "Hame", or "home."〔(Foundation's Edge ) By Isaac Asimov, page 79〕 As revealed to the reader at the end of ''Second Foundation'', not all these farmers were what they seemed, with the now-rustic Trantor serving as the centre of the Second Foundation. From Trantor, the Second Foundationers secretly guided the development of the Galaxy (roughly parallel to the city of Rome becoming, after the fall of its empire, the headquarters of the Papacy, with its enormous influence on the development of Medieval Europe). Indeed, their self-perception as leaders of the future Second Empire is captured in the Second Foundationers' use of the word "Hamish" to describe the farmers despite reserving for themselves use of the word "Trantorian." It is noted that it was the Second Foundation which ensured that the famed library would survive the sacking of Trantor and the destruction of its urban culture – especially significant, considering that the library was vital to the Second Foundation itself. In the Asimov canon, where events of this time are depicted mainly from a Foundation perspective, the Fall of Trantor is mentioned only as a piece of faraway news and in various later short references. However, Harry Turtledove attempted to fill in the details in his "Trantor Falls", focusing on the efforts by the Second Foundation to survive during the sacking of Trantor (published in the 1989 ''Foundation's Friends'', where various writers took up the ''Foundation'' universe). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Trantor」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|