Nightfall Study Guide

In 1941, John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of the premier science fiction magazine at that time, asked one of the fledgling writers he mentored an intriguing question: What would happen if people saw the stars only once every thousand years? He postulated that people would go mad and asked twenty-one-year old Isaac Asimov to write a story about it. The result was ‘‘Nightfall,’’ now one of the most famous science fiction stories of all time. Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941, it now appears in dozens of anthologies, but is perhaps most easily found in Nightfall and Other Stories or another of Asimov’s own anthologies The Best of Isaac Asimov.

To describe a population to whom the appearance of stars would be a rare phenomenon, Asimov created the planet Lagash where there are six suns and perpetual daylight. With no nighttime, the stars cannot be seen and therefore are not known. Astronomical science has not yet reached the point of being able to look beyond the suns. The concept of darkness is mysterious and frightening. However, scientists at Saro University are predicting a total eclipse of all the suns at once. They are aware, based upon archaeological studies, that civilization seems to have been destroyed about every two thousand years, the same time period of the occurrence of the eclipses. If the two are related, will the darkness once again cause a hysteria that will destroy the world? As the scientists prepare for calamity, they are joined by a newspaper reporter, and all hope to save future generations from fear through a record of factual knowledge. However, a religious cult is also predicting the phenomenon as a judgment against evil. ‘‘Nightfall’’ is a psychological thriller as scientists fight ignorance, zealotry, madness, and their own fears of the unknown.

Nightfall Summary

‘‘Nightfall’’ is a story about a planet that does not experience nightfall except once in every 2,049 years. With six suns, Lagash otherwise exists in perpetual sunlight. In the course of describing the last four hours before darkness covers all, Asimov explains how a rare eclipse is able to blot out all the light and why the event always results in universal chaos. This feat he achieves by placing the story in the Observatory of the scientists who are able to predict the coming phenomenon. Aton 77, the aged director of Saro University and chief astronomer, is preparing to try to record the eclipse and whatever follows so that there will be scientific evidence to explain what has happened.

On a planet where darkness is unknown, the expectation is that everyone will go insane from fear and claustrophobia, and that in their fear they will try to burn anything that will catch fire in order to produce light. Archaeological evidence has shown that about every 2,000 years, on at least nine different occasions, whole civilizations have disappeared. The assumption is that the fires get out of hand and everything is destroyed in the chaos of madness. To prevent the panic and help people prepare so that they might survive the next eclipse, the scientists are... » Complete Nightfall Summary