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If this is more appropriate for the off-topic section due to it being compared to non-40k material, I apologise.

My question is: is the Imperium of Man the biggest empire ever imagined and recorded in a commercially available mainstream fiction? (i.e. not just some story you read online and not an idea you just had in your head) Are there any other known works of fiction that depict an empire larger than at least a million planets?

Well that depends, most of the planets are hardly mentioned or are hardly indepth. Its as easy as them putting figures in the millions and then thats as far as heaps of their fluff goes. "they lost 2 million men" "This Planet has 13 billion people". Stuff like that (which is most of 40k) doesnt to me count as highly thought out back story. Some is, some isnt but im not big into sci fi so i shall see what others have to say.

Ah, no.

Star Wars and Star Trek both encompass more space, more people and more species of life, and that's just off the top of my head.

A million planets in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way is a piddly, piddly number of planets when it comes down to it... it's just a lot for its own setting.

If not largest its right up there. The Culture was pretty large, but not that large IIRC. Dune / Star Trek was only several hundred each.

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
If this is more appropriate for the off-topic section due to it being compared to non-40k material, I apologise.

My question is: is the Imperium of Man the biggest empire ever imagined and recorded in a commercially available mainstream fiction? (i.e. not just some story you read online and not an idea you just had in your head) Are there any other known works of fiction that depict an empire larger than at least a million planets?

A certain human empire in the Dr Who-verse spanned 3 galaxies. I think that it even grew more sizeable than that with time. If I'm not mistaken, at some point, they even had to Exterminatus an entire galaxy of their own.

 Psienesis wrote:
Ah, no.

Star Wars and Star Trek both encompass more space, more people and more species of life, and that's just off the top of my head.

A million planets in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way is a piddly, piddly number of planets when it comes down to it... it's just a lot for its own setting.

One empire (ie one entity). ST only had several hundred planets at the time of the Dominion War.

Star Wars I don't know about.


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 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
If this is more appropriate for the off-topic section due to it being compared to non-40k material, I apologise.

My question is: is the Imperium of Man the biggest empire ever imagined and recorded in a commercially available mainstream fiction? (i.e. not just some story you read online and not an idea you just had in your head) Are there any other known works of fiction that depict an empire larger than at least a million planets?

A certain human empire in the Dr Who-verse spanned 3 galaxies. I think that it even grew more sizeable than that with time. If I'm not mistaken, at some point, they even had to Exterminatus an entire galaxy of their own.

Yet they always needed the Doctor.

The UFP has 150 "member planets" which seem to correspond to the homeworlds of its member species... but most of these species are in possession of several planets/colonies, so the actual number of worlds in the UFP is not known.

The UFP is more like NATO, in that it has its member nations, but those nations may have protectorates, colonies, or other holdings outside the borders of the patron-nation.

Star Wars:

During the days of the Galactic Empire more than 69 million systems met the requirements for Imperial representation, and 1.75 million planets were considered full member worlds.[3] The population, of the nearly 70 million systems that the Empire was responsible for, amounted to more than 100 quadrillion beings.

 Psienesis wrote:
The UFP has 150 "member planets" which seem to correspond to the homeworlds of its member species... but most of these species are in possession of several planets/colonies, so the actual number of worlds in the UFP is not known.

The UFP is more like NATO, in that it has its member nations, but those nations may have protectorates, colonies, or other holdings outside the borders of the patron-nation.

Star Wars:

During the days of the Galactic Empire more than 69 million systems met the requirements for Imperial representation, and 1.75 million planets were considered full member worlds.[3] The population, of the nearly 70 million systems that the Empire was responsible for, amounted to more than 100 quadrillion beings.

Ayah the Empire is big. However, the ST numbers above aren't even statistically significant in size to the Imperium. Technologically etc. could be a completely different story, but not in terms of shear number of planets with populations on them.

From what I can tell Poul Anderson had a galactic wide human empire series, and Doctor Who has a human empire that spans several galaxies.

I can think of several fictional universes with larger empires, the aforementioned Star Wars and Doctor Who being just a few.


40k basically just pulled the "million worlds" thing from Dune.

The Borg for one.

Edit: I realised you asked biggest empier. I was thinking of biggest exspanded known setting.


These things can get hard to calculate. Doctor Who's timy whimy wobely time properties tend to make shure it operates with only on timeline. But it does have parrarel universes, and once you start doing that things tend to get much bigger fast. Although, they often do not get that exspanded upon.

Alternate universes and alternative time lines can add a lot of geigraphic area you have to calculate inn when you measure the meters. For instance warhammer have 2 universes (regular universe and the warp.)

The online comic sluggy freelance has quite a lot of diferent dimensions as bad people in varius dimenions start to weaponise the temporal flux agutator. But the sluggy universe rarly moves away from more then a coupel of planets so it is not so big. But the consept is cool.

The Dominators from doctor who supposedly ruled 10 galaxies, while the full dalek empire spanned the universe.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
The UFP has 150 "member planets" which seem to correspond to the homeworlds of its member species... but most of these species are in possession of several planets/colonies, so the actual number of worlds in the UFP is not known.

The UFP is more like NATO, in that it has its member nations, but those nations may have protectorates, colonies, or other holdings outside the borders of the patron-nation.

Star Wars:

During the days of the Galactic Empire more than 69 million systems met the requirements for Imperial representation, and 1.75 million planets were considered full member worlds.[3] The population, of the nearly 70 million systems that the Empire was responsible for, amounted to more than 100 quadrillion beings.

Ayah the Empire is big. However, the ST numbers above aren't even statistically significant in size to the Imperium. Technologically etc. could be a completely different story, but not in terms of shear number of planets with populations on them.

Well, here's the thing... eventually, a large section of the Klingon Empire joined the UFP. How many worlds were in the Klingon Empire? We don't know!

How many worlds did the Vulcans colonize? Humans? Deltas? Betazoid? The other nine hundred species that the shows, movies and stories come up with, like that green chick who bunked with Uhura in the reboot Star Trek?

We don't know. 150 member worlds, that's like signatory nations of the UN or NATO, but not every member-nation... we simply don't know how big the UFP is. Is it a million worlds? Who knows! It might be, it might not be. It is said to be 8000 light-years across, though, iirc. Not that that means anything, in the end, because the IoM is hardly a contiguous astro-political entity.

AT-43 is a good one.

Cogs Empire spans multiple galaxies, Therians plan to stop the heat death of the universe to secure immortality.

The Inhuman/Kree Empire in Marvel Comics encompasses most of one galaxy, all of another one, and bits and pieces of other parts of "existence".

 DarknessEternal wrote:
The Inhuman/Kree Empire in Marvel Comics encompasses most of one galaxy, all of another one, and bits and pieces of other parts of "existence".

Is that new? Pre Annihilation they just ruled part of this galaxy I thought, and post Annihilation that was heavily reduced.

According to the wiki, the Galactic Empire of star wars fame ruled 1.5 million member worlds and 69 million other worlds where they had some degree of influence over.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
The Inhuman/Kree Empire in Marvel Comics encompasses most of one galaxy, all of another one, and bits and pieces of other parts of "existence".

Is that new? Pre Annihilation they just ruled part of this galaxy I thought, and post Annihilation that was heavily reduced.

Yes, post quite a bit from Annihilation. The Inhuman/Kree empire vassalized the Shi'ar in War of Kings. The Shi'ar formerly controlled an entire galaxy, bits of others, and a good deal of the Negative Zone. Now it's all Kree.

Not to call Tyranids an "empire", but haven't they consumed entire galaxies?

That's not actually supported anywhere.

If I recall correctly the Empire in the Andromeda TV series covers 3 whole galaxies at its height - biggest one I can think off, off hand

 Psienesis wrote:
Ah, no.

Star Wars and Star Trek both encompass more space, more people and more species of life, and that's just off the top of my head.

A million planets in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way is a piddly, piddly number of planets when it comes down to it... it's just a lot for its own setting.

"Star Wars" and "Star Trek" are not empires, they are settings, and otherwise your post is incorrect. Both 40K and Star Trek encompass the same amount of space (based on the real Milky Way galaxy), though I do believe that the 40K galaxy is actually somewhat larger, as the map shows planets existing in areas where there shouldn't be anything at all. In the case of Star Trek, as its based heavily on *real* science, the realm of space it occupies is in reality pitifully small:



See that chart in the upper right that says "known space"? Notice where its basically a circle 1500 lightyears across? Again, the milky way galaxy is between 100 thousand and 120 thousand lightyears across... the Imperium of Man is something like 100,000 lightyears in diameter (astronomican is said to define the boundaries of Imperial space to something like 50,000 lightyears in diameter.

The Federation of Planets isn't even close to filling that 1500 lightyear span, which would be like 3 or 4 sectors out of hundreds/thousands within the IoM. In regards to the number of planets, both Star Trek and 40k are working off the same science from 30 years ago. Back then (hell even 5 or 6 years ago) a million inhabited planets was considered *absurd*, because estimates (until the recent findings of tons of exoplanets) told us that most of the stars in the galaxy (upwards of 80%) had no planets in orbit, they were just balls of gas in space, and of those that did have planets (most would not be able to support life at all. I think in one episode of The Original Series its estimated that there are at best 3 million inhabitable planets in the entire galaxy, so that the Imperium occupying 1 million planets would be 1/3rd of the galaxy with the remaining 2/3rds to be filled in by the other factions.

The Star Wars galaxy (actually galaxies) is another matter entirely. Expanded Universe sources place it at 120k light years across (comparable), orbited by 7 companion galaxies (I dont think thats the case with the Milky Way). The Galactic Empire had full membership of 1.75 million worlds (occupying a much smaller space than the Imperium of Man, as roughly one-third to half of the main galaxy constitutes the "Unknown Regions"), which doesn't include countless additional worlds that were entirely independent, nor the worlds that belonged to other governing bodies (Hapes Consortium, Corporate Sector Authority, etc.), nor does it include the fact that while there were 1.75 million *worlds* represented, there were in actuality 69 million systems. So based on the numbers, I'm giving it to the Galactic Empire from Star Wars (at least until someone tells me of a larger galaxy-spanning nation from a source I've never heard of), although the physical size of its domains might be smaller, the population (100 quadrillion sentient beings IIRC) and number of planets, etc. is greater than the IoM (according to official sources at least).

 scarletsquig wrote:
AT-43 is a good one.

Cogs Empire spans multiple galaxies, Therians plan to stop the heat death of the universe to secure immortality.

The Xeelee, from Stephen Baxter's SF novels, populated every known galaxy in the universe, IIRC. Certainly, humanity came into conflict with them across the entire local galactic supercluster. Their nemeses, the photino birds, were equally widespread.

So, I'd go with either AT-43's Therians or the Xeelee.

Thats an awesome ST map pic.

Both Star Wars and Star Trek encompass the same amount of space (based on the real Milky Way galaxy),

The Star Wars Galaxy is not the Milky Way. It is a galaxy far, far away. Everything else that you posted after this falls apart based on this one incorrect assumption.

"Star Wars" and "Star Trek" are not empires, they are settings

If you want to be a pedantic ass, ok, here you go:

Wookieepedia wrote:
During the days of the Galactic Empire more than 69 million systems met the requirements for Imperial representation, and 1.75 million planets were considered full member worlds. The population, of the nearly 70 million systems that the Empire was responsible for, amounted to more than 100 quadrillion beings.

Where is your God-Emperor now?

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
If this is more appropriate for the off-topic section due to it being compared to non-40k material, I apologise.

My question is: is the Imperium of Man the biggest empire ever imagined and recorded in a commercially available mainstream fiction? (i.e. not just some story you read online and not an idea you just had in your head) Are there any other known works of fiction that depict an empire larger than at least a million planets?

Off the top of my head...

The Galactic Empire in Star Wars was also 1 million worlds, though they include filty godless xenos in their ranks.

The Federation in Star Trek is much smaller, 500 worlds or less.

The various factions in Babylon 5 also had dozens to hundreds of worlds.

Firefly's Federation (or whatever they were called) had dozens.

Don't know how big the Dune empire was, but their universe has no known (intelligent) aliens.

IIRC the Commonwealth in the syndicated show Andromeda spanned 3 galaxies which would make it much much larger than the Imperium or indeed any of those in terms of area.

I think the Skrulls and Kree in Marvel span multiple galaxies but that might be more 60s comic writers having no idea how big a galaxy is.

But the grand prize goes to Asimov's epic story story The Last Question (seriously read it it's awesome) had the human race occupying the entire universe.

So unless someone has a multiverse-spanning empire I give it to Asimov.




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Poly Ranger wrote:
The Borg for one.

Borg had a quarter of the Milky Way, almost certainly smaller than the Imperium or the Galactic Empire.

Psiensis, climb down off your horse. First off, I misspoke, I meant to say 40k and Star Trek encompass the same amount of space, thanks for pointing that out, I corrected it, but sadly for you, that one typographical error I made does not cause the rest of the post to 'fall apart' as you so put it, since the rest of the post is still entirely 100% correct and based on, you know, facts.

In regards to being a 'pendantic ass', I'm not sure 'pedantic' means what you think it means... considering the question posed was in regards to larger EMPIRES and not larger GALAXIES/SETTINGS, with the Imperium of Man specifically being singled out (rather than the '40K Galaxy'), thats kind of a HUGE difference.

And as for where my God-Emperor is... well, allow me to quote myself:

chaos0xomega wrote:


The Star Wars galaxy (actually galaxies) is another matter entirely. Expanded Universe sources place it at 120k light years across (comparable), orbited by 7 companion galaxies (I dont think thats the case with the Milky Way). The Galactic Empire had full membership of 1.75 million worlds (occupying a much smaller space than the Imperium of Man, as roughly one-third to half of the main galaxy constitutes the "Unknown Regions"), which doesn't include countless additional worlds that were entirely independent, nor the worlds that belonged to other governing bodies (Hapes Consortium, Corporate Sector Authority, etc.), nor does it include the fact that while there were 1.75 million *worlds* represented, there were in actuality 69 million systems. So based on the numbers, I'm giving it to the Galactic Empire from Star Wars (at least until someone tells me of a larger galaxy-spanning nation from a source I've never heard of), although the physical size of its domains might be smaller, the population (100 quadrillion sentient beings IIRC) and number of planets, etc. is greater than the IoM (according to official sources at least).

In short: Bro, do you even read? Or do you just make it a habit of making yourself look ignorant and foolish?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Poly Ranger wrote:
The Borg for one.

Borg had a quarter of the Milky Way, almost certainly smaller than the Imperium or the Galactic Empire.

Not quite.



The borg were simply dominant in the Delta Quadrant, but they don't exactly control the entirety of it.

How big was the empier to the ring world enginers?

Or the halo ring makers from halo?

Also, do not the borg invade other universes? I know they tangeled with species *somethig something*, implying they have exspanded into other dimensions.

Point remains, Asimov wins.

http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-question/