Location from Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Spacer world where humans lived alone with only robots for company — still inhabited in the Foundation era, but its residents have evolved into something barely recognizable as human and lethally dangerous.
Solaria took the Spacer philosophy to its logical extreme: if human contact was unpleasant, eliminate it entirely. Each Solarian lives alone on an estate served by thousands of robots, communicating with others only through holographic viewing — never in physical presence. Over twenty thousand years, this isolation produced evolutionary changes: Solarians developed telekinetic abilities powered by internal transducer organs, allowing them to manipulate their environment without robots and, critically, to kill without weapons. By the Foundation era, Solaria is the deadliest planet in the galaxy. Its inhabitants are hermits with the power of gods and the social skills of feral cats. They annihilated a landing party without apparent effort and made clear that further visits would be met with the same response. The Foundation wisely left them alone. Solaria matters to the series as a warning: this is what humanity becomes when it optimizes for individual comfort at the expense of collective connection. Gaia is Solaria's philosophical opposite — maximum connection instead of maximum isolation — and Trevize's choice between them is the series' central question.
A world of vast, empty estates separated by hundreds of kilometers. Each estate is a self-contained domain with its own power systems, robot workforce, and ecological management. The landscape is beautiful — manicured gardens, pristine forests, clean rivers — and completely devoid of human presence except for the single Solarian within each estate. The buildings are designed for one: no gathering halls, no shared spaces, no accommodations for visitors. Robots are everywhere. Humans are nowhere.
Also known as: the Hermit World, Solaria