The story is trying a 'what if' along the lines of 'what if human society had never experienced total darkness - then suddenly had darkness thrust upon them?'Ī setup for that sort of thing would be pretty far-fetched. I was just wondering what others thought. So you mean to say that they never invented light bulbs? True there was always one or more sun in the sky at any time, but even so they have buildings and the interiors would benefit from lighting. But it seems like a somewhat advanced society - they have astronomers with telescopes and cameras and Asimov even mentions at one point the use of refrigerated transport vehicles.

It will cloak the planet in darkness, something that the inhabitants have never experienced and which will cause widespread madness. Second, the whole story in Nightfall revolves around an impending very rare solar eclipse of the one sun out of six that is in the sky at the time. This is rather farfetched, especially as I just finished reading What a Martian Looks Like, which suggests that any alien life would be so different from us as to be unrecognizable in many cases. POSSIBLE SPOILERS -įirst, Asimov created an alien world populated by beings that for all intents and purposes seemed like humans in a very humanlike society. I have to say that I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

I recently read somewhere that this is considered one of the very best science fiction stories of all time, so I got a copy and read it.

Nightfall asimov