Short Story: Nightfall

Overview

Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall unfolds on Lagash, a planet bathed by six suns whose crisscrossing orbits banish darkness from the sky. Night is unknown, stars are myth, and human psychology has never adapted to prolonged absence of light. Archaeological layers show periodic civilizational collapses every two millennia, cycles marked by widespread fire. Scientists at the Saro University Observatory gradually converge on a chilling explanation: once every 2, 049 years, celestial mechanics strand the planet with only the red sun Dovim in the sky, and a recently detected invisible moon eclipses even that last light. True night descends, stars blaze forth in numbers beyond comprehension, and the population goes mad, setting cities alight to restore the only comfort they know, illumination.

Setting and Premise

The six-sun system, Onos, Dovim, Tano, Sitha, Trey, and Patru, keeps Lagash in perpetual day. Astronomer Aton and his colleagues mine historical and geological evidence for a pattern of catastrophe matched by an ancient religious text from a millenarian cult, which prophesies the return of darkness and the heavens “filled with lights.” The Cult venerates flame and awaits the apocalypse, while the scientists, horrified to find their calculations agreeing with prophecy, prepare to observe the rare eclipse and preserve knowledge for the next cycle.

Characters and Conflict

Theremon 762, a skeptical journalist, arrives to debunk the astronomers on the very day the alignment is due. He spars with Aton, who is implacable, and with Sheerin, a psychologist who explains that human minds on Lagash are unacquainted with darkness and will not bear it. Experiments and anecdotes, children terrified in unlit rooms, adults driven to hysteria in enclosed dark spaces, suggest that the first true night will overwhelm reason. Government authorities struggle to maintain order as the Cult stirs panic and mobs descend on the observatory, blaming the scientists for summoning catastrophe. The staff plan two defenses: capture photographs of the eclipse to pass onward, and shelter a small archive of knowledge in a hidden refuge, hoping some survivors will rebuild.

The Eclipse

As the paired suns set in their turns, the red eye of Dovim hangs alone. The city grows tense, lamps are hoarded, and the Cult chants in exultation. When the invisible moon edges across Dovim, the light dwindles to a thin arc and then vanishes. True night, unprecedented in collective memory, falls. The astronomers step outside and see the sky crowded with countless stars, far more than anyone could have guessed, revealing a universe unimaginably vast. The sight crushes their frame of reference. Awe becomes terror; minds snap. Fires erupt across Saro as citizenry and cultists alike ignite anything that will burn, a convulsive instinct to recreate day. The observatory is overrun, instruments smashed, and whatever records were made are likely lost to flame. Theremon, who came to scoff, succumbs to the same cosmic dread as the others, whispering for light while the heavens blaze with indifferent brilliance.

Themes and Resonance

Nightfall fuses hard science with psychological insight to suggest that human perception is bounded by environment and habit. Scientific method and religious myth converge on the same event from different directions, not to reconcile worldviews but to expose the limits of both when faced with enormity. The story contemplates cyclic history, the fragility of civilization, and the existential vertigo of realizing one’s world is a speck in a sea of suns. Its final image is both catastrophe and reset: cities burning under the first starry sky the planet has ever known, knowledge scattered, and the seed of progress possibly preserved for a future that will face the same dusk again.