“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!” So begins perhaps one of the greatest science fiction short stories even written. It is a defining work in a canon of literature which has, alas, faded somewhat into obscurity and been branded the sole domain of the geek, nerd, or whatever affectionate term the teenage vernacular bestows upon these reclusive souls in this current generation.
But in sci-fi legend Isaac Asimov’s magnum opus, Nightfall, you will not find the ghastly clichés of Battlestar Galactica or the dreadful ‘cheese factor’ of Star Wars, nor will you find droids and cyborgs sparring with lasers or ludicrous little green men with engorged foreheads. On the contrary, Nightfall is powerful and haunting in that its foundation is built upon humankind’s deepest, most primal fear – fear of the dark. On the planet Lagash (well what is a sci-fi story without at least one ridiculous name?), a world with six suns that provide constant light, there is never night, never darkness. Reporter Theremon 762 and a host of doomsaying scientists can therefore only look on in terror as an eclipse inexorably takes place, gradually enveloping the planet darkness.
For a planet that has never once experienced nightfall, scientists realise that when the darkness comes it will drive everyone to insanity and civilisation will burn, while religious fanatics believe that the stars will appear and rob humanity of their souls. Either way, the characters’ certainty of humanity’s doom at the inevitable onset of the eclipse makes for a sci-fi story quite unlike any other, a story perhaps not quite as grandiose in its external scope as some science fiction, but instead grounded in the most disquieting and intrinsic fears that lie within each and every one of us.