rantor, on the one hand, can be understood as the Empire in its most unbridled form, colonising and governing all surrounding worlds and extracting from them what the Empire required for its own inhabitants. This intensity was matched only by the sheer precarity it dealt, leading to a coup staged by rebel leader Gilmer, displacing Trantor and the imperial family. Over time it was the farmers, discovering the fertile soil presented by the planet Trantor, who became the recognised inhabitants of Trantor, reclaiming what could be regarded as extracted from them. Empire and precarity coexist, and eventually the Empire probably brings about its own precarious fall.Right now our planet, marked by ongoing urbanisation of a certain kind – with the exploitation and extraction of capital and self-serving Empire(s) co-existing with forms of precarity more severe than in any earlier period – is on a collision course with itself. What science fiction was made of has become the new reality.