Trapped is a science fiction novel written by the Canadian author James Alan Gardner and published in 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers under its various imprints. The book is the sixth installment in Gardner's "League of Peoples" series of novels, set in the mid-25th century. While the majority of the novels in the series take place in outer space, Trapped (like Commitment Hour, the second novel in the series) is set on "Old Earth", and does not feature the series' continuing character Festina Ramos. Backstory Trapped exploits and develops the same conceptual background that all the novels in the series employ. Around the middle of the 21st century, humanity is contacted by an extraterrestrial race connected with the League of Peoples. These beings, the Shaddills, offer humanity a bargain: humans who accept the League's cardinal rule, and refrain from fatal violence against other sentient beings, can be transported to a terraformed planet, a "New Earth", and receive the benefits of the League's advanced technologies. At first, the only humans willing to accept the bargain are those whose difficult lives leave them feeling they have nothing to lose; but in a year or two, these early adopters return to visit "Old Earth" with tales of their marvelous new lives—and the exodus begins in earnest. Over a span of two decades, most of humanity leaves for New Earth, which forms the center of an interplanetary society called the Technocracy; and the modern technological society of Old Earth collapses through depopulation. Once the Shaddills' twenty-year offer has expired, the only people left on Old Earth are those who were too violent or recalcitrant to leave. In this state of collapse, Old Earth is vulnerable to various influences and interferences. Most notably, the planet is infested with a wide range of nanotechnology that mimics bacteria and viruses; by the 25th century, "thirty percent of all microbes on Earth...are actually nanites in disguise". These nanites generate fields that can be tapped by gifted individuals to produce effects that replicate the wonders of legend and folklore—magic and sorcery, psychic powers, even "pseudo supernatural events" like ghosts. The chaos on Earth is finally brought under control by a mysterious group called the Spark Lords. They suppress terrorism, confiscate remaining nuclear weapons, poison gas, and biological warfare agents; they "lockdown" the planet, preventing further incursions from aliens. Members of the alien species in Gardner's fictional universe—Divians, Mandasars, Cashlings, and