Nightfall

Born in 1920, Isaac Asimov is one of the most preeminent writers of science fiction, identified alongside Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein as one of the Big Three authors in the genre. He is best known for Foundation, a seven-book series that concerns the collapse of a galaxy-spanning empire. The narrative concerns that would dominate the Foundation novels can be seen in his 1941 story, “Nightfall,” which also revolves around the collapse of a planetary civilization after an inevitable yet natural cataclysmic event. Asimov was also known for his work as a writer of popular science books, leveraging his educational expertise as a chemist to produce several nonfiction guides on topics such as atoms and elements. Other books enabled Asimov to demonstrate his strength as a generalist, such as the 1960 guide The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science. His mastery of the sciences seeped across genres into fiction. In “Nightfall,” he writes eloquently about the conditions that would allow a six-sun planet to fall into complete darkness after living in perpetual daylight for so long. Nightfall expands the narrative of “Nightfall” by applying a multi-disciplinary approach to the phenomenon of darkness and the appearance of the