Galactic Empire

Emblem of the Galactic Empire

The Galactic Empire is an extensive group of planets settled by humans across the whole galaxy in Isaac Asimov's Robot series, Empire series, and Foundation series of novels. It is clearly based on the Roman Empire.

This article, Galactic Empire, contains spoilers. Be forewarned, plot and/or ending details follow. Asimov says you decide.

The Galactic Empire consists of twenty-five million inhabited worlds, all colonized by Settlers from Earth, as opposed to Spacers.

The Galactic Empire is ruled by a single man, the Galactic Emperor.

The Empire's capital is Trantor, a planet covered entirely by a giant city, located near the center of the Galaxy. It is both the center of power in the Galaxy and also the administrative head.

History

The history of the Galactic Empire is over twelve thousand years long.

• The first emperor was Franken (1-). He unified the Galaxy. In the later years, an Emperor called Aburanis wrote a code of laws for an easier rule of the empire.
• Earth situation was bad. After the radioactive attack, the population lived in some parts of the planet, and the only Imperial avanpost was on Himalaya. In the time of the Emperor Kandar V, the majority of Earth people were sent to Alpha.

Rise of the Empire

As of 827 G.E. (Galactic Era, the number of years after its founding), the Galactic Empire comprises millions of inhabited worlds with five hundred quadrillion residents. The Galactic Empire was made possible by the ability of humans to travel through hyperspace. The space navy of the Galactic Empire is called the "Imperial Navy". The empire's capital, named Trantor, is the closest habitable planet to the centre of the galaxy.

The Golden Age

In 12,068 GE, a mathematician called Hari Seldon, by the means of Psychohistory, the science he invented, predicts the fall of the Empire. He predicts that the empire will collapse within 300 years, leading to a 30,000 year period of anarchy before a Second Empire is established. To influence events so that the interregnum period will be only 1,000 years and not 30,000, he creates a small haven of technology in a corner of the galaxy (on the planet Terminus) called the Foundation, whose job it will be to preserve knowledge from the collapse, thus reducing the time required for the next Empire to rebuild.

Fall of the Empire

Two hundred years later, when the Empire is well into its collapse, it launches an attack against the First Foundation, led by general Bel Riose. By this time, the Foundation holds economic control over a large portion of the galactic periphery, and word of the Foundation is starting to reach the Empire at the Galactic Core. Riose repeatedly defeats the Foundation through brilliant tactical and strategic planning. Before he can complete his conquest, however, he is recalled by the Emperor, tried for treason, and executed, as the Emperor fears that the general might become strong enough to dethrone him.

Following the defeat of Bel Riose and the subsequent death of Cleon II, the Galactic Empire falls into a civil war. After this civil war an even more rapid phase of decline begins, with weak emperors losing vast amounts of territory and strong ones barely holding onto what they have. Three-hundred years after the Foundation's creation, the Galactic Empire's capital world, the city-planet Trantor, is sacked.

The Empire now bases itself on Neotrantor, which is almost mockingly named so; it was an agricultural colony that used to feed Trantor. The Galactic Empire, which used to touch every planet in the Milky Way galaxy, is reduced to twenty agricultural planets. It is dwarfed by most barbarian kingdoms.

The greatest conqueror the Galaxy has ever seen, The Mule, defeater of the First Foundation, later conquers the pathetic remains of the Galactic Empire as well.

The Periphery

The Periphery refers to the outer rims of the Galactic Empire, including planets such as Anacreon and Santanni. Imperial control is weakest in the periphery, as planet governors there frequently possess their own fleets. Santanni revolts. About fifty years after the First Foundation is established on Terminus, the emperor grants the periphery autonomy. This effectively removes them completely from Imperial control, making the dissolution of the Empire far more apparent than it had been before.

In the years preceding the fall of Trantor, the periphery became any area outside the empire; as this area became larger the empire became less and less great. As the empire decreased in size and power, the stagnation that would ultimately cause the collapse of the empire increased.

Trivia

• Asimov created the Galactic Empire in the early 1940s, based upon the Roman Empire, as a proposal to John W. Campbell after reading Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when he was working at the Philadelphia Navy Yard with Robert Heinlein. The concept evolved through short stories and novellas in Astounding Science Fiction magazine during the 1940s, culminating in the publication of the Foundation stories as a trilogy of books in the early 1950s.
• It comes into existence approximately 10,000 CE, year one of the Galactic Era. The establishment of the Empire was originally 34,500 CE, according to Asimov's unofficial unpublished early 1950s chronology.