Trantor or Rivendell?
Check out:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/are-future-folk-friends-far-folk-rivals.html#comment-473929
“Is Time
Us, Space Them?”
They ask;
which is better, a “Time” civilization of a mere 100,000 people, which lasts a
billion generations, or a “Space” civilization of 1,000,000,000,000 people
which lasts a mere hundred generations? It’s the same number of people but
differently distributed in time and space.
Most of the
people on that thread preferred the Time civilization; but I, in contrarian
mode, wrote:
<<
A civilization of a trillion doesn’t go ‘extinct’, any more
than the
Roman Empire did; it ‘falls’, which means that some of the
people
survive, but the way of life goes away, and there are
successor
civilizations, which inherit some of the founding
civilization’s ideas
and values.
Whereas that billion-generation backwater sounds deadly
dull; and it
will go extinct, all the way, its people and its ideas too. Why
even
bother living there? It was never alive in the first place!
I think the Space civilization will have a bigger positive
cultural
impact on the galaxy than the Time civilization… even after
a billion
generations!
So I personally prefer the Space civilization over the Time.
Trantor
rocks, Rivendell flops.
>>
The names
“Rivendell” and “Trantor” are references; the first, to the Elvish town in
J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; the second, to the
planet-spanning galactic capital city in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy .
In my email
I overstated the case. Details matter. First, let’s change the numbers a bit.
As is the census proposed is:
Rivendell:
100,000 citizens; 1,000,000,000 generations.
Trantor:
1,000,000,000 citizens; 100 generations.
But then
Rivendell has too few people, and it changes too slowly. With 100K people, they
have maybe a small college, two theaters, a business district, and it all shuts
down at 11 p.m. Bo-ring! In fact the Council of Rivendell would consciously use
boredom as a means of population and political control. Dissidents either get
out of town or kill themselves. Imagine this Peyton Place of a townlet lasting
for tens of billions of years! They’d have to pack up and move when the sun
burns out; and meantime erosion and mountain-building is a major threat. If the
landscape changes but the city doesn’t, then isn’t Rivendell literally dumber
than the rocks?
And as for
Trantor; a trillion people would need to colonize distant worlds; so in what
sense would it be ‘a’ civilization?
So I
propose this revised census:
Rivendell:
a million people, a million generations.
Trantor: a
billion people, a thousand generations.
The first
is a fair-sized colony, lasting for tens of megayears, a
longish species lifetime. So this is a Local Range; the Home
of a Kind.
The second is a world civilization, lasting for tens of
kiloyears,
about the length of history. This is a World Culture with a
History.
Trantor
colonizes space, and Rivendell colonizes time.
To keep
Rivendell fresh, let’s make it a college town. Rivendell University, in its new
location; they had to leave the old place (mega-volcano eruption) and build a
new campus here. They’ve still settling in, it’s been only 1.7 million years.
But despite Rivendell’s traditionalism, it manages to keep up with the times;
for they accept students from all over the Solar system. How’s that for a
happening place?
And as for Trantor…
there is no boredom on Trantor, and no shortage of rebels. Trantor is always up
to something big; a war, a revolution, a reformation, a renaissance; political
decay, cultural flowering, religious crises and scientific breakthroughs; and
whatever Trantor does, it does it.
Trantor
never sleeps. So of course people will want to go to Rivendell just for a bit of rest. But sorry, no
uninvited visitors.
So which
would you prefer? Rivendell or Trantor? In this
revised version Rivendell is at least a somewhat happening
place; and
Trantor has respectable longevity chops; and it’s a fair
trade-off. The
city is to the world as history is to deep time.
I see a
perfectly fine SF novel in this, with a single world inhabited by both a
Trantor and a Rivendell. (Almost everywhere, from Trantor’s point of view;
temporarily, from Rivendell’s.) To Trantor, a thousand years is a long time; to Rivendell,
a thousand people is a big crowd.
Rivendell
has changed locations several times, to keep up with the geography. There are
abandoned fossil Rivendells, which other peoples dug up for treasure and
technology; notably the precursors to the Trantor world-civilization. The word “Trantor”,
to the Trantorians, means the name of their planet; and also mankind; and also ‘culture’,
‘peace’, ‘order’, and many other soothing ideals; with predictable tragicomic
consequences.
A spacelike
civilization meets a timelike civilization; temporarily, locally; yet everyone
in Trantor is affected by Rivendell, even on the other side of the planet; and
Rivendell never forgot Trantor, even after mountains wore down.
For one
thing, they stole a lot of tech from each other. There may even be a tendency
for Trantor to re-create another Rivendell, on a distant world; and a
reciprocal tendency for Rivendell to recreate another Trantor, in the distant
future.
Rivendell’s
rebels will leave, and will either vanish into obscurity, or find a Trantor to influence. Rivendell’s influence on
galactic culture is slow but cumulative; a trickle of exiled geniuses; Trantor’s
influence is all at once.
Perhaps a
rebel Rivendellian will leave, mix with Trantor society
collect a cadre of likeminded malcontents, and then leave
for a distant
world, to found New Rivendell. (Where they will offer modern boredom!)
Trantor’s
rebels will go out, in waves after waves, each to form their own utopian
Rivendells. Some of those Rivendells will go extinct, others will remain
static, others will mutate into new Trantors.
Rivendell
is to Trantor as spore is to redwood.
