Asimov's Nightfall

Transcript

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Your brain wasn't built for the conception any more than it was built for the conception of infinity or of eternity. You can only talk about it. A fraction of the reality upsets you. And when the real thing comes, your brain is going to be presented with the phenomenon outside of its limits of comprehension. You will go mad completely and permanently. There is no question of it!

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What if humanity evolved on a world where the sun never set? And as a result, humankind developed a fear of the dark nyctophobia, so severe that even a few minutes of it could lead to severe psychological distress. In such a world, darkness would be more than merely the absence of light. It would be an unthinkable terror, a force that could unravel the mind itself. That is the premise of Asimov's Nightfall. A story that asks the question: what happens when a world bathed in endless sunlight faces its first true night? Nightfall by Asimov is interesting because you can read two versions of it. Nightfall was originally published as a short story in 1941 and then later adapted into a novel in 1990 with the help of Robert Silverberg. Both versions have the same premise but differ vastly in scope and character depth. The short story is only about 30 pages long, a good length for a short story, but the novel is easily over 300 pages. Now, the 1941 short story is undoubtedly a classic, and the novel is great in its own right. But it was written 50 years later, at a completely different stage of Asimov's career. So for the purposes of this video, we'll focus mainly on the short story, which is a lot more concise and focused compared to the novel. 1941 would be the very beginning of the golden age of science fiction. Asimov's fledgling days, really. When I finally get around to my long history of science fiction video, we'll discuss this era and all of the others in detail. But for now, just know that this story, like many others during the Golden Age, was shaped by the editorship of none other than John W. Campbell. According to Asimov himself, the story began to develop after a conversation he had with John W. Campbell, based on a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 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? The influence of John Campbell can be felt basically all over Nightfall, in its focus on scientific reasoning, in its focus on psychological tension, the way ordinary people respond to extraordinary cosmic events. It's a story that captures the optimism and the anxiety of the golden age, and the belief that even the most terrifying mysteries of the universe could be understood through observation and inquiry. The entire short story basically consists of people discussing and debating the universe, the history of civilization, and contemplating what will happen when and if the long night actually comes. In the story, we meet a group of scientists and journalists at Sarau University trying desperately to understand a strange astronomical anomaly. The scientists discovered that the planet Lagash is a part of a six-sun system, and through careful observation, they've realized that once every 2,000 years or so, a rare alignment causes all six suns to set at once, plunging the world into total darkness. And this discovery coincides with the archaeological evidence that civilizations have collapsed in regular cycles, each time leaving behind only ruins and fragments of history. The scientists begin to piece together the horrifying truth. Those collapses of civilization were not caused by war or famine, but the simple absence of light. The central characters include the astronomer Aten, the reporter Theremon, who throughout the story remained skeptical of the truth of these reports, and he had been critical and dismissive of them in his past article. There's also a psychologist there named Shirin, and he gives much of the exposition about the history of their world and descriptions of their current understanding of their solar system. As the day of darkness approaches, they prepare their observatory and ready the cameras and instruments determined to record the event for future generations, if there are any survivors left to see it. Meanwhile, a religious sect known as the Cult of Flame grows increasingly frenzied, convinced that the coming night will mark the end of the world and the rebirth of the city of God. And the city of Trigon, at high noon, Verdrant II came forth and said unto the men of Trigon, Lo ye sinners, though ye scorn the ways of righteousness, yet will the time of reckoning come. The prophecy mirrors the scientists' findings in many eerie ways, though each side interprets the coming event through very different lenses, one empirical and data-based, and the other mystical and fatalistic. The prophecies are, in fact, distortions passed down from a cyclical past. In the story, as the suns begin to set one by one, panic spreads across the city. Fires break out as frightened citizens attempt to summon light by burning anything they can find. The scientist, secure within the observatory, which was built in what Asimov called Neo-Govadian style, which could mean brutalist architecture, but it's not exactly clear. But they say in the story that the facility is built like a fortress. If they can survive the night, then perhaps they can survive to see what is left of their world when the light returns. From inside they watch the last glimmer of sunlight fade, and then for the first time, in thousands of years, true darkness falls. It is overwhelming, absolute, a weight pressing down on their minds. When the stars emerge in the sky, tens of thousands of them blazing cold and bright across the heavens, the sight drives nearly everyone mad. The scale of the universe, once unimaginable, becomes horrifyingly real. Once again, civilization collapses into ruin. One of the really interesting things about Asimov's Nightfall short story is the amount of world building that Asimov squeezes in here and there. Like the idea that civilization seems to historically fall apart approximately every 2,000 years. Historians don't necessarily have a solution for why this happens, but of course the recent scientific discoveries seem to provide an answer. Fans of the Three Body Problem series will notice that Lu Shishin obviously drew some inspiration from this short story when designing the homeworld of the Triselerens. Both civilizations are at the mercy of cosmic forces that they barely understand. In Nightfall, the people of Lagash don't even realize that they live in a fragile system governed by multiple suns. They've never seen the stars, never experienced true night, so the very concept of darkness has been reduced to myth. The only trace of that forgotten truth exists in ancient scriptures passed down by a cult that no one takes seriously anymore. Stories of a coming long night that most people simply dismiss as superstition. Meanwhile, in the three-body problem, the Trisolerian civilization essentially faces the opposite problem. They understand exactly what type of system they live in. They are trapped in the chaos of three suns whose unpredictable orbits make stable life almost impossible. Another aspect of this story that I find intriguing is the cult. The idea that civilization collapses every 2,000 years due to most people being driven insane by darkness, and yet still some form of legend is passed on. Carried down from the ramblings of lunatics, or children who were too young to be really driven insane, but carried with them some basic memories of the events. Maybe even just scraps of history left over, but distorted and twisted as all myths and legends are. The story to me also has many elements of cosmic horror. The idea of a cult passing down ancient knowledge about the cosmic alignment of stars and the end times is very Lovecraftian, and there are certain passages and lines that are quite Lovecraftian. For example, when a cult member starts to speak and quote their scripture. And men did assemble in the public squares and in the highways there to debate and marvel at the sight, for strange depression had seized them, their minds were troubled and their speech confused, for the souls of men awaited the coming of the stars. And in the city of Trigon at high noon, Verdrint came forth and said unto the men of Trigon, Lo ye sinners, though ye scorn the ways of righteousness, yet will the time of reckoning come. Even now the cave approaches to swallow Lakash, ye and all it contains. Basically, the belief of the cult is that every few thousand years, the world passes through a great cave in space. A moment when the stars themselves return. They believe that during this time the stars take the souls from people's bodies, leaving behind only animal flesh. In their eyes, this is why people go mad when darkness falls. It's empty and feral. In fact, the cult members are terrified of not being able to see the stars, because they fear that when the time comes, they would be condemned to remain grounded and their souls would not be elevated. The other obvious Lovecraft nod is the idea of cosmic madness setting in. The dark isn't just terrifying, it drives them mad with inconceivable cosmic dread. He was going mad and he knew it. And somewhere deep inside a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off the hopeless flood of black terror. It was very horrible to go mad and know that you were going mad, to know that in a little minute you would be here physically, and yet all the real essence would be dead and drowned in the black madness. For this was the dark, the dark and the cold and the doom. The bright walls of the universe were shattered and their awful black fragments were falling down to crush and squeeze and obliterate him. And of course, the other interesting aspect of the story is the idea of antagonism towards science. And in the story, that antagonism towards science comes from multiple directions. It comes from the media, which immediately attempts to dismiss and ridicule the findings of the scientist. And it also comes from the cult, who initially helped the scientist at first when they thought the scientists would fully validate their beliefs, but turned on the scientific researchers when they provided actual explanations for the myths and not just blind validation of the myths. In my honest opinion, the ending of the story is actually quite terrifying. It freaks me out, and I think it's important to understand that there is an almost pathological difference between the humans that evolved in this world versus us. They never adapted to deal with darkness. In our world, we developed a fear of darkness because of the things that might have been lurking in it. But most of us don't have a true phobia of darkness. We can handle a few hours of it. It might be disturbing, unsettling even, but it wouldn't destroy our sanity. The people on Lagosh have no concept of true darkness. To them, it is something sanity-breaking. And I think it's important to note that it isn't just the darkness itself that drives them mad. It's the darkness combined with the realization that the universe is far bigger than they ever imagined. That they are so tiny in the vastness of the universe. It's a very Lovecraftian idea. The universe's long stretches of black emptiness, with only tiny punctures of light, the stars. That idea would be existentially disturbing for most people, if you really think about it. The vast emptiness of it all. Through it shone the stars. Not Earth's feeble thirty-six hundred stars visible to the eye. Lagash was in the center of a giant cluster. Thirty thousand mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world. Ferimon staggered to his feet, his throat constricting him to breathlessness, all the muscles of his body writhing in intensity of terror and sheer fear beyond bearing. The bottom line is this is one of Asimov's best short stories, and it is also one of his earliest. It's widely recognized as a highly influential classic. Hi guys, it's Quinn here. I've been doing YouTube for 11 years now. Yes, this is the 11-year anniversary of this channel. It's been incredible. Lately, though, with the current state of everything, I've been getting more and more comments asking if my voice is AI generated. They've been asking, am I just an AI avatar? And I just wanted to add this on to the end of my video, just to be clear. I am a real person. My voice is not AI generated. I am a real human being, flesh and blood. This room is real. And I just wanted to say that from now on I am going to be appearing on camera more, bringing a bit more of the human element back into my channel. I'm of course going to keep my videos structured and informative as I always have done, but I want to continue to evolve and improve my content. As always, thank you guys so much for watching, and I hope to continue making content for years into the future. Thanks so much for watching, guys.