This Blog Is Retroactive

“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!”

That’s the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that inspired one of the most celebrated short stories of the latter half of the 20th century, Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall.

I’m a huge science fiction fan. I love science fiction movies and science fiction literature. I’m sort of a johnny-come-lately though, in that I only started getting into sci-fi literature a few years ago. The first two books I purchased were a couple of anthologies of Isaac Asimov’s, Gold and Other Worlds of Isaac Asimov. Among many other gems in Other Worlds was the short story Nightfall.

The premise is simple. What if humans had never known darkness? I think all of us, even adults, still harbor a deep and primal fear of the dark, but we subdue it. What if we had never known darkness before today? Can you imagine how earth-shatteringly frightening that might be? What if the darkness in and of itself was not the most inconceivable thing that the absence of sunlight might reveal?

The fictional planet in the story, Lagash, is surrounded by six different suns, ensuring that its inhabitants are never without daylight. Through a series of interrelated archeological and astronomical discoveries it is theorized that every 2049 years the orbital irregularities of their planet result in a brief period of night, which happens to coincide with these repeated collapses of civilization.

The story begins four hours before this theorized event is due to occur again. The mood of many characters in the story is incredulity at such a preposterous theory. However, those in the know are convinced of the impending disaster and trying in whatever way they know how to prepare for the coming darkness, even though they believe there is no escaping the madness that will tear apart their society at its onset.

I didn’t know of the quote by Emerson or its influence on Nightfall until after I had read it. I don’t believe that one needs to be familiar with the quote to appreciate this story. However, now that I am I think it adds a whole other layer of depth to a short story that’s already pretty amazing.

Click here to read Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall.