Nightfall (Asimov novelette and novel)

Nightfall

An image of a solar eclipse, the sky is dark blue and filled with stars and the horizon is a red glow.

Nightfall 1990 edition
Author Isaac Asimov
Robert Silverberg
Country United States
Language English
Genre Science fiction
Publication date
 1990
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 352
ISBN 978-0-553-29099-8
OCLC 24434629

"Nightfall" is a 1941 science fiction novelette by American writer Isaac Asimov about the coming of darkness to the people of a planet ordinarily illuminated by sunlight at all times. It was adapted into a novel with Robert Silverberg in 1990. The short story has been included in 48 anthologies, and has appeared in six collections of Asimov's stories. In 1968, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story written prior to the 1965 establishment of the Nebula Awards, and included it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964.

The short story was published in the September 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine under editor John W. Campbell. It was the 32nd story by Asimov, written while he was working in his father's candy store and studying at Columbia University. According to Asimov's autobiography, Campbell asked Asimov to write the story after discussing with him a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!

Campbell's opinion was to the contrary: "I think men would go mad."

In 1988, Martin H. Greenberg suggested Asimov find someone who would take his 47-year-old short story, "Nightfall", and – keeping the story essentially as written – add a detailed beginning and a detailed ending to it. This resulted in the 1990 publication of the novel Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. As Asimov relates in the Robert Silverberg chapter of his autobiography, "...Eventually, I received the extended Nightfall manuscript from Bob [Silverberg]... Bob did a wonderful job and I could almost believe I had written the whole thing myself. He remained absolutely faithful to the original story and I had very little to argue with."[1]

Plot summary

The fictional planet Lagash (Kalgash in the novel adaptation) is located in a stellar system containing six suns (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta are the only ones named in the short story; Onos, Dovim, Trey, Patru, Tano, and Sitha are named in the novel), which keep the whole planet continuously illuminated; total darkness is unknown, and as a result, so are all the stars outside the planet's stellar system.

A group of scientists from Saro University begin to make a series of related discoveries: Sheerin 501, a psychologist, researches the effects of prolonged exposure to darkness; Siferra 89, an archaeologist, finds evidence of multiple cyclical collapses of civilization which have occurred regularly about every 2000 years, and Beenay 25 is an astronomer who has discovered irregularities in the orbit of Lagash around its primary sun Alpha. Beenay takes his findings to his superior at the university, Aton, who formulated the Theory of Universal Gravitation (the in-story discussion of this makes light of an article once written about Einstein's theory of relativity, referencing the false notion that "only twelve men" could understand it). This prompts the astronomers at Saro University to seek the cause of this anomaly. Eventually, they discover that the cause of the deviation is an astronomical body that orbits Lagash, but is invisible due to the light of its suns.

Beenay, through his friend Theremon 762, a reporter, has learned some of the beliefs of the group known as the Cult ("Apostles of Flame" in the novel). They believe the world will be destroyed in a darkness that unleashes a torrent of fire. Beenay combines what he has learned about the repetitive collapses at the archaeological site, and the new theory of potential eclipses. He concludes that once every 2049 years, due to planetary alignment, only one sun becomes visible in the sky. This single sun is eclipsed by the orbiting body, resulting in a brief "night". His theory is that this "night" was so horrifying to the people who experienced it, that they desperately sought out any light source to try to drive it away: particularly, by frantically starting fires which burned down and destroyed their successive civilizations. He also postulates that the "Apostles of the Flame" started out as vague surviving legends after the last eclipse: small children too young to understand what was happening did not go insane but grew up half-feral in the ruins. As they grew older, the only clues they had to what had happened were the insane ramblings of adults who had lived through the eclipse. Over the centuries, these vague stories became legend, and then a cult of religious devotion.

Since the current population of Lagash has never experienced general darkness, the scientists conclude that the darkness will traumatize the people and that they need to prepare for it. When nightfall occurs, the scientists (who had prepared themselves only for darkness) and the rest of the planet are stunned by the sight of the hitherto invisible stars outside the six-star system, filling the sky. Never having seen other stars, the inhabitants of Lagash had come to believe that their six-star system contained the entirety of the universe. In one horrifying instant, anyone gazing at the night sky – the first night sky which they have ever known – is suddenly faced with the reality that the universe contains many millions upon billions of stars: the awesome realization of just how vast the universe truly is drives them insane. This night sky is very different from that of Earth's, because Lagash and its stars reside in a globular cluster, where hundreds of thousands of stars are visible in the now-darkened sky.

The short story concludes with the arrival of the night and a crimson glow that was "not the glow of a sun", with the implication that societal collapse has occurred once again. In the novel and X Minus One program, civil disorder breaks out; cities are destroyed in massive fires and civilization collapses. Afterwards competing groups try to seize control amidst the ashes of the fallen civilization.

Setting

The system of Kalgash has six stars named Alpha, Beta, etc. in the original short story, whereas each has a proper name in the novel. In the novel, Onos is the primary sun of Kalgash and is located 10 light-minutes away, similar to the distance from Earth to our Sun. The other five suns are minor in comparison, but provide enough light to prevent the inhabitants of Kalgash from defining "night". The only other distance given is that Tano and Sitha form a binary star system about 11 times as far away as Onos.

From what can be drawn from the text, Onos, the star appearing brightest and largest in Kalgash's sky, is the star that Kalgash orbits. Onos, in turn, orbits around the binary system Trey and Patru, the other binary system Tano and Sitha, and the red dwarf star Dovim. In addition to these stars, the only other celestial object mentioned is Kalgash's moon, dubbed Kalgash Two by the scientists of Kalgash. Kalgash Two follows an eccentric orbit around Kalgash and every 2049 years it eclipses Dovim, during a period when from one part of Kalgash, Dovim is the only star that would be visible.

The characters of Nightfall travel to three separate locations on Kalgash. Most of the book is set in Saro City, which is situated near a large forest with trees, bushes, and graben (scavenger animals). As stated in the introduction, the weather in the book is analogous to the meteorologic experiences of the characters in the book, and the region of Saro City receives rains that last several days. The first major weather fluctuation mentioned in the book is the sandstorm that Siferra 89 avoided by hiding under a tarpaulin with her crew. The other weather event was the monsoon-like rains that occurred after Sheerin 501 returned from a consultation in Jonglor, which is described as a northern city. Siferra 89 travels to Beklimot, which is described as half a world away from Jonglor. Beklimot is located on the Sagikan Peninsula, near mountains. Beklimot is in a sandy, arid desert region.

Adaptations in other media

In the 1950s, the story was adapted for radio programs Dimension X and X Minus One.

In 1976, Analog Records, as their only release, presented a further dramatization of "Nightfall" on a  33 1⁄3 rpm vinyl record, produced by James Cutting and recorded at American Learning Center. After the story, it includes a dialog between Isaac Asimov and Ben Bova.

In 1988, Nightfall, a low-budget movie, was produced based upon the story.[2] The movie was shot on location at the Arcosanti Project, using the resident community members as background actors. Another film version, Nightfall, was made in 2000.[3]

In April 2007, the story was the 100th episode of Escape Pod, a science-fiction podcast.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Asimov, Isaac (1994), I, Asimov: A Memoir, New York: Doubleday
  2. ↑ Nightfall (1988) on IMDb
  3. ↑ Nightfall (2000) on IMDb

Further reading


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