The ending is a strength, not a weakness. Asimov chose not to spoonfeed the reader. He provided everything the reader needs to understand the outcome for the planet's civilization.
The storyline is complete as the next stage of civilization has already been laid out. However, the scientists were hoping to retain proof (their families are secure in a cave) so as to avoid repeating the cycle. The absolute climax (when even the scientists "go insane") is when they see not a few stars, but millions (as Lagash is in the galactic center). This reduces their existence to an insignificance in an incomprehensibly vast galaxy.
Exactly, what truly destroys the Lagash civilization is not the darkness. Scientists were ready for the darkness, they thought they could ride it out, with newly invented torches. But when 30.000 stars appear, and they realize that universe is far vaster and they far smaller and more insignificant than they believed... that destroys the scientists too. And the story ends with scientists mad, and fires spreading, showing that the 2000 year cycle of the civilization of Lagash is happening again.
Hey, Bro. Next time you write a comment, be aware that something you say could spoil the story for anyone who reads your comment. Maybe delete your last sentence.
I read it when I was 12 during my childhood in Manila in the Sixties - recommended to me by a friend who was part of a clique of SF fans at school which I happily joined. It was a revelation! I still get chills reading the final paragraph!!!! The story helped make a lifelong SF fan!!! Truly Asimov's best short story and one of the greatest of all time! Thank you for reminding me of this great work and vital piece of my childhood!
I used to have this book, and read the story back in the 70s. That book has some of the greatest SF stories ever written, and several have been put on the screen. Nightfall is great, but my favorite is The Cold Equations, by Tom Godwin. Asimov has the ability to make a new world no one has ever thought of before. If you want to read Asimov's best, I recommend the novel The Gods Themselves, if you haven't read it already. The only problem with some stories here is that technology and science have advanced so much that they are dated. Nightfall is one of the few that can be appreciated without overlooking the technology - there is very little in the story. Sorry for the ramble. When I read this most of the authors were still alive. Alas, they are all gone now.
Is "the cold equations" the stowaway one? Nice story. Theres a similar short story about FTL via star trek like transporter technology and the ramifications of what that means for the person who gets transported.
I only remembered the ending when the sunlight disappears in an eclipse, which happened every 2000 years, and every eclipse makes Man's civilization fall. When it is restored, the people want to forget-- Stars are considered a Myth. "there are no stars". Until the next eclipse is due.... I just found 'Nightfall' online, so I read it again. (Aton, babbling) He was crying, whimpering horribly like a terribly frightened child: "Stars -- all the Stars -- we didn't know at all. We didn't know anything. We thought six stars in a universe is something the Stars didn't notice is Darkness forever and ever and ever and the walls are breaking in and we didn't know we couldn't know and anything -- " The very first time I read the shortstory, decades ago, I didn't expect this ending at all, the end of civilization - again - because of utter fear and madness. The people thought it was a myth, after all. I found this very dramatic and tragic. Asimov was a great, great writer. I never read the re-write by Robert Silverberg, - another sci-fi genius - as I still find the original shortstory perfect as it is... My other Asimov favorites is the trilogy with crime investigator Elijah Baley and his robotic companion R. Daneel Olivaw. Sublime.
Asimov really is an incredible writer! I was so invested in the story that the ending felt too abrupt, but wanting more just proves once again how great of a writer he is! thanks for taking the time to comment!
@LiminalSpaces03 It's not abrupt, not really. What the story mainly is for me, is the human (collective) mind, which so quickly derails into environmental panic, and superstition. Fortunately, WE don't lose our minds over an eclipse. We would, when the sun turns into a blue square sprouting fiery tentacles. 🙂 There is also an element of religion in the story. That's why Nightfall fascinates me-- I find religion Homo sapiens's biggest mistake. At the same time, the moment there was that "I think, therefore I am" awareness, we started looking for a cosmic Father, or Big Brother. Would the baboon or the dolphin evolve into the next life form at the top of the food chain, both will build temples too. The hive insects already do. The queen is their God. Btw, I predict a great future for the Tardigrade! The little critter may evolve into a cosmic super boss! Asimov was, next to an atheist, an agnostic. Atheist from a scientific point of view. But the agnostic Asimov was right, of course, we cannot prove or disprove "God's" existence. Which goes for Life too, Are we really existing, or Someone/something's dreams? Who's entertaining experiment are we? There is an astronaut who came back to Earth and said: "[up there] I saw God." I would have said: "I experienced a sense of wonder." I looked up Arthur C Clark. HE was "just" an atheist, I think. But for me, both writers (aka scientists) were pragmatists. Knowing that life is a temporarily state-- after that, forget it; the eternal Nothing. Before birth, there was eternal Nothing too, after all. We can compare ourselves to a Big Bang... 😶🌫
the rewrite is poo. total waste of time. renames the planet Kalgash totally missing the Sumerian overtones Asimov intended. what a steamer that rewrite was
They made a movie of the novel... It was crap. I don't remember reading the novel, which is odd. I remember books fairly well. I don't remember things I don't finish, so I'd guess I probably started it and didn't finish it.
To me the flaw is that a reasonably advanced civilisation who are so frightened of lack of light have not created artificial lights for many circumstances that they will encounter, from the mundane like central rooms in buildings through to underground rooms like basements, then enclosed dark spaces like elevators, caves, mines and so on.
Its a solar system with several suns, so ordinar people have never experience a true night or the stars. They give a exampel of a dark-ride amusement park thrill ride, its not the darkness in itself, that drive people mad, but the "majesty" of the stars, and you have a major cult/religion that successfully predict the end-of-the-world, that think its a VERY good idea to burn down the decadent civilisation, so it can be reshaped in ther own image.
Yea, it's a major flaw, tho alleviated with the fact that they know fire. It's trivial to use it for light, and they'd like even more than we do. The outside of this world would be pretty dry without rain and I assume the darkness would make a temperature change that's very significant. I'd assume rain would also bring darkness, so they'd fear rain a bit, and eclipses. From the psychological perspective, imagine how prevalent fearing the dark would be in that society. There are a few flaws in the concept, but it's interesting nevertheless. I think the whole idea is centered about our fear of the dark. Humans don't see that well under darkness, imagine how they would feel? Yea, they'd freak out for sure.
Great story read it back in the late 70s I think for the first time . Loved it went on to read an absolute ton of Asimov and still reading predominantly SF to this day . Nightfall 1and2 the collected stories are both very good as far as I recall.
I do remember a phrase from the novel, goes something like "....the stars will be seen (or maybe the stars will shine) and the world will burn..." I know My quote is wrong, but everyone believed the stars will cause the the world to burn...not the real reason, that people will burn anything/everything to have light.
This reminds me of the movie "Pitch Black". However, I find it implausible that a society has been around long enough to have journalists and scientists so smart as to predict from gravity perturbations that there's an unseen moon which will eclipse the one visible sun at a certain time every 2000 years, but they haven't discovered a means of artificial lighting. After all; they've got fire; all they need is something to burn that will last the duration of the eclipse. Don't they have oil, or gas or electricity...?
yeah, that was hard for me to accept while I was reading it as well. I think Asimov was going for the idea that light was so prevalent that scientist never had a reason to create artificial sources. Still, kind of a hard to swallow. Thanks for the comment!
But the majority of people don't believe that it will happen. It's like the climate change deniers. They don't think they need artificial light for any reason. They have much better things to do with their time and money. And so when it does happen they will go nuts and destroy everything, including the few people who were prepared. And you have to admit that is a very human thing to happen. Things very like that have happened throughout history.
Exactly. There is no light in a cave, the bottom of the ocean, a room with no windows etc. So even on a planet that had no night they would still need some kind of artificial light.
considering that its shown that tneir entire people have severe nyctophobia they would avoid any areas that would be dark, like caves, and/or redirect natural light to light such areas. Their culture would be similar but not identical to ours. They, obviously couldn't mine by digging a series of tunnels in the ground, they would preform mining in a way that they slowly remove entire layers and just keep digging a huge hole. Much like Mir diamond mine. And scientists do develop torches and prepare to ride out the eclipse, unfortunately for them, its not the darkness that ultimately destroys them. Its the lights.
Think about how widely and deeply our world's life forms are affected by the day/night cycle (not to mention the seasons). How would life evolve and function on a six-sun world that experiences night-time only once every two millenia?
a good tale of the "challenge of the infinite" but remember- for expanding perspective Arthur C. Clark: The Sentinel (1951) seminal wrt - 2001: A Space Odyssey
Actually, it was a competition. In 1965, with the creation of the Nebula award, the Science Fiction Writers of America decided to vote on which story was the best Sci-fi story prior to the Nebula Award. This is the story that won! I was surprised, because I thought there were better stories on the ballot, which is why I named the video this way.
If this story had continued on to show civilization burning down and people going mad, it would have been just one more zombie apocalypse among many. It is the IDEA that makes this story a classic. People running around battling against the end of the world is acutely boring by comparison.
I first read this story when I was in high school and thought it was fascinating and creepy and sad. I recently re-read it (well, listened to the audiobook version) when going through the anthology you held up at the beginning. It was just as entertaining, but now with more than 5 decades between reads, a period that includes much amateur astronomy and some professional aerospace engineering experience, it left me puzzled. As hard as I try, I can't come up with an arrangement of 6 suns and planet that fulfills the premise of the story. If I understand correctly, the planet is in constant sunlight all the time, meaning that the planet orbits in among the different stars. However, once every 2,000 years it comes to the edge of the cluster where only one sun is further out, and a (normally) unseen moon eclipses that sun, plunging the planet into darkness. If that is correct, then the other side of the planet will still be illuminated by 5 of the suns, so only half of the planet will experience the darkness-madness. OTOH, if the planet has this rare occurrence happen when it reaches the edge of the cluster so that all 6 suns are on the same side, then the far side would experience darkness on a periodic basis more frequently than when the eclipse occurs on the daylight side. That would be rare, but probably not civilization shattering. Has anybody worked this out? I'd love to see where my understanding is mistaken.
I haven't read the book, but with the plane rotating it should be possible for the whole planet to experience a few hours of night where they see a dark sky and lots of stars around an eclipsed sun, shouldn't it...?
2,049 years? And how is that measured, exactly? We here on Earth have the concept of "day" and "year" precisely because of the relationship between one planet (ours) and one sun (Sol). To properly appreciate Asimov's story, you have to set aside the science (because it simply doesn't work or make any sense), and focus on one thing, i.e., the transition from constant sunlight to a period -- though very limited in duration -- of total darkness, and toss in the sudden revelation of a night sky that is choking with stars. In other words, the story isn't about how a world lit by six suns can actually exist; it's about what happens when that condition for life suddenly disappears.
Six suns?!!? Cixin Liu shows us three are probably two too many for most civilisations in 'The Three Body Problem'. Also Douglas Adams in 'Life, the Universe and Everything' - his second sequel to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has the antagonists of planet Krikkit decide to destroy the galaxy as they don't like the view of all the stars. Krikkit having been surrounded by a dust cloud that previously blocked any sight of the stars in the Krikkitinian night skies. When the planet's scientists and ruling elites see the splendor of the Universe for the very first time, they unaminously decide "it has to go".
How long does this eclipse last? Seems the "madness" would be over pretty quickly. Also, if the people are so adversely affected, what about other life forms?
Avoid the two movie versions of Nightfall. Neither one are particularly good. I do recall that there's an old-timey radio play of Nightfall that was pretty decent.
@@david124cherrington5I think I heard the radio play before reading it. Our library had a large selection of cassette with radio recordings. A crazy thing, our library in South Jordan Utah had many Asimov books (in the 80s). But, all the libraries in Jefferson county (just west of Denver) had only 4 books.
