|
Book Home  Books Information Encyclopedia Galactica
Encyclopedia Galactica
The Encyclopedia Galactica is a fictional or hypothetical
encyclopedia of a future galaxy-spanning civilization, containing
all the knowledge accumulated by a society with trillions of people
and thousands of years of history.
It was first used by Isaac Asimov in his novel Foundation,
where it is central to the first part of the plot. Various people
have since used the same idea, both in science and in science fiction.
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series frequently
contrasts the Galactica with the presumably more popular Guide. For
example, the introduction to the first book notes:
"In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the
Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already
supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository
of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and
contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it
scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
"First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words
Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."
Part XII of Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage television series
is titled Encyclopaedia Galactica. In it, Sagan suggests that such
an encyclopedia might be broadcast into space and could possibly be
received through radioastronomy (see SETI). He explores the idea of
how different civilizations, including our own, might be described
in such a work. In his version of the encyclopedia, each civilization
has a "probability of survival" rating — for a hypothetical
highly technologically advanced civilization utilizing Dyson Spheres,
he suggests a probability of survival of 99% per 106 years. For Earth,
he speculates that the probability of survival might be viewed by
other civilizations as only 40% per 100 years, reflecting the Cold
War conditions of the time the documentary was made.
There are similarities between the hypothetical Encyclopedia
Galactica and the Wikipedia projects. Both are attempts to capture
a broad range of human knowledge. Both are authored by legions of
dedicated scholars. Because of this correlation, one may occasionally
find references to characters or quotes from the Foundation novels
in self-referencing Wikipedia articles. This is a subtle form of Wikipedia
humor.
Other instances of such encyclopedias in fiction include:
The Repository of the Ancients, from Stargate
SG-1
Adventures of Superman #617 (2003)
|
|
