Imperial Officer: Lord Vader, the rebels have fled the ice planet of Hoth. After going to the swamp planet of Dagobah, Skywalker has rejoined his friends on the desert world of Tatooine. And now the rebel fleet is massing for an attack on the forest moon of Endor.
Darth Vader: I sense a great disturbance in the Force.
Imperial Officer: My lord?
Darth Vader: How else can so many worlds be totally covered with only one terrain type without regard to latitudinal variations?
In Foundation, Asimov suggests that spaceships start running on coal power, after civilization collapses so far that people forget how to build nuclear engines. He was always more of a Big Ideas Guy than a Fine Details Guy.
Maybe. I just remember re-reading the book in preparation for the TV Show’s release, and being somewhat set back by how low tech even the more advanced set pieces were in the book compared to the show. It makes more sense when you recognize these books were written in the 1940s, practically before rocketry was a thing. But it’s still a bit of a trip to see what Asimov considered the future would look like.
An ecumenopolis makes more sense imo. It’s artificially created and a somewhat believable endpoint for population growth in the capital of a galaxy spanning civilization
Also Star Wars… Star Wars even have a city covering an entire planet.
From Irregular Webcomic!, #87 via https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SingleBiomePlanet
Yes, they copied it from Foundation. Trantor has a perfectly fine reason for being the way it is, that would apply to Corusant too.
That is, if physics actually allowed them to be that way. Apparently Asimov didn’t run the numbers on that one.
In Foundation, Asimov suggests that spaceships start running on coal power, after civilization collapses so far that people forget how to build nuclear engines. He was always more of a Big Ideas Guy than a Fine Details Guy.
Wait, wasn’t it a metaphor for “some nuclear reactor so rudimentary that they could as well use steam engines”? I really don’t remember it well.
Anyway, he’s famous for running the numbers for some things. But yeah, he absolutely didn’t do it for all things.
Maybe. I just remember re-reading the book in preparation for the TV Show’s release, and being somewhat set back by how low tech even the more advanced set pieces were in the book compared to the show. It makes more sense when you recognize these books were written in the 1940s, practically before rocketry was a thing. But it’s still a bit of a trip to see what Asimov considered the future would look like.
Trantor is Rome and the galaxy is the empire.
An ecumenopolis makes more sense imo. It’s artificially created and a somewhat believable endpoint for population growth in the capital of a galaxy spanning civilization