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The Encyclopedia Galactica is a fictional or hypothetical encyclopedia of a future human galaxy-spanning civilization, containing all the knowledge accumulated by a society with quadrillions of people and thousands of years of history.
Fictional Instances
First used by Isaac Asimov in his collection of short stories Foundation (1951), where it is central to the first short story, "The Encyclopedists," originally published as "Foundation" in 1942. Various people have since used the same idea, both in science and in science fiction. One example of this is when it was used by Carl Sagan in his 1980 book Cosmos, and his documentary series of the same name, to refer to a text where hypothetical future civilizations could store all of their information and knowledge. It was also a common fixture in previous incarnations of the Legion of Super-Heroes comic books,[1] and has appeared in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.[2] and Superman comics set in the future.[3]
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series frequently contrasted the Galactica with the apparently 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 Hitchhiker'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. |
” |
In Arthur C Clarke's and Gentry Lee's Rama II, Nicole des Jardins says to Richard Wakefield "Just think, the sum of everything all human beings know or have ever known might be nothing more than an infinitesimal fraction of the Encyclopedia Galactica."
References
External links
- H2G2 - BBC - h2g2 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Galaxy Quest - Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide: huge, nerdy, and imprecise. By Paul Boutin Posted Tuesday, May 3, 2005, at 2:37 p.m. PT on Slate Magazine. Paul Boutin compares Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Galactica of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- Encyclopedia Galactica - A Guide to Asimov's Foundation Universe
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