Solaria

Solaria was a fictional human-inhabited planet in Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Robot series. It features mainly in The Naked Sun, to a lesser extent in some later novels.

Solaria was the last of fifty Spacer worlds colonized by humans in the first wave of interstellar settlement, occupied from approximately 4270 AD by inhabitants of the neighboring world Nexon originally for summer homes. It was ruled by a Regent after it became independent around roughly 4500 AD. The Solarians specialized in the construction of robots, which they exported to the other Spacer Worlds. Solarian robots were noted for their variety and excellence. They also exported their grain, which was used to make a pastry known as the pachinka.

Ultimately, Solaria became totally dependent on robot labor; roughly 10,000 robots existed for every human. The world was extremely sparsely inhabited, with only 20,000 humans (and 200 million robots) inhabiting 30 million miles² (78 million km²) of fertile land, divided into over 10,000 huge estates (the exact number is unknown, since some of the estates were inhabited by couples). The population was kept stable through strict birth and immigration controls. In the era of Robots and Empire, no more than five thousand Solarians were known to remain. 20,000 years later, the population was 1200—one human per estate.

The Earth detective Elijah Baley visited Solaria around 5022 AD to solve a murder mystery. By then, its inhabitants had evolved an isolationist culture in which its citizens never had to meet, save for sexual contact for reproductive purposes. All other contact was accomplished by sophisticated telepresence "viewing" systems, with most Solarians exhibiting a strong phobia towards actual contact, or even being in the same room as another human. All work was done by robots. Already, by this stage he considers Solaria to be a dysfunctional society.

Over the following centuries and millennia, Solaria became even more rigidly and obsessively isolationist, and its population was believed to decline by other Spacers. Around 5222 AD, Solaria cut off all contact with the rest of the Galaxy, although continuing to monitor hyperspatial communications. The human inhabitants vanished, giving the impression that they had died out, although they had in fact withdrawn underground; their estates continued to be worked by millions of robots. It was eventually forgotten entirely as the other Spacers died out, with any stray visitors to the planet being attacked and killed by robots programmed to view non-Solarians as non-human; during a brief visit, D.G. Baley, R. Daneel Olivaw and Gladia Delmarre barely escaped with their lives.

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