25 of the best fictional planets to visit

7. Trantor (Foundation series)

If you’re ready for some old-school science fiction, then there are few better places to visit than Trantor. That’s one of the planets often referenced in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, as well as in Asimov’s Empire novels.

Trantor is located at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, or at least as close as it can get before getting sucked into the massive black hole at the center. Even if Asimov was indulging in a bit of hyperbole or lax scientific grounding, Trantor may be the metaphorical center of the human world. It’s the capital of the Galactic Empire, a highly developed world packed full of more than 40 billion humans.

Yes, a visit to Trantor is going to be a tight squeeze, but it might be worth a day or two. Due to less than ideal environmental conditions, many of Trantor’s buildings are either completely underground or covered by protective domes.

A word of warning, however: try to avoid the sack of Trantor. That’s the massive upending of the planetwide society, thanks to the even bigger fall of the First Galactic Empire. Rebels had little mercy and many survivors promptly left for quieter lands. Eventually, those who remain on the planet sell off much of Trantor’s metal from its structures and ease into a more peaceful Agrarian existence.

Post-downfall Trantor is still worth visiting. It turns out that this now-sleepy planet is the base for the Second Foundation, part of a larger effort to retain humanity’s accumulated knowledge and wisdom. Hopefully, if both the Second and First Foundations keep it together, humanity will be able to rebuild that much faster. Maybe you’d like to be part of the effort?