Nightfall

Isaac Asimov. Nightfall. 1941

Well, I am a huge Asimov fan but call me unimpressed. N. B. I am not
claiming any dazzling insights or anything. Just my honest-to-goodness
reaction to what is claimed to be his best work. Ever.

Weaknesses:
In all the stories read by me so far in this collection, all the
authors felt the need to introduce an ignoramus character so that the
other characters can lecture at him and simultaneously bring the reader

up to speed on the world being built by the writer. I thought that
maybe the idea of using Letters, books of revelation, etc hadn't yet
occurred to writers. But then I remembered that Bram Stoker's Dracula,
heavily relied on such tropes. So Asimov doesn't get out of jail on
this one.


Asimov's ignoramus character really made this story ring hollow. A
journalist, pouring vitriolic ridicule on a scientist, doesn't even
know what he is ridiculing?
And he is actually a heroic and well-respected journalist?


Asimov takes pain to establish that these people are exactly like us,
with approximately the same cultural and scientific achievements as us.

And yet the scientists are unable to convince people to stay at home
during a solar eclipse!


Well, I have lived through a solar eclipse myself and I remember the
hype, the hoopla and how brilliantly and successfully the scientists,
the press et al had succeeded in convincing us that - for our own good
- we needed to stay indoors and not look at the Sun directly. We have
arranged a live telecast on TV. Please watch it on TV!


A very minor weakness of course is that in a multiple Sun system, even
a dozen Newtons over 400 years probably wouldn't be able to figure out
the laws of gravity. But I will grant Asimov this point.
Lots of good reading still left!

"Girish" <girishbhat6620.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:

> Isaac Asimov. Nightfall. 1941
>
>Well, I am a huge Asimov fan but call me unimpressed. N. B. I am not
>claiming any dazzling insights or anything. Just my honest-to-goodness
>reaction to what is claimed to be his best work. Ever.

Most popular in reader polls. Asimov himself, of course, never
considered it his "best work", it was written early in his career
when he was barely in his 20s and he knew he had done tons of
better work over the next 40-mumble years.

I will not rebut anything, enough has been written on "Nightfall"
and enough of those writings are available on the web to sate
anyone. However, I do want to suggest one thing to you about one
of your comments.

>Asimov's ignoramus character really made this story ring hollow. A
>journalist, pouring vitriolic ridicule on a scientist, doesn't even
>know what he is ridiculing?
>And he is actually a heroic and well-respected journalist?

Remember when the story was written. ~1940, 30+ years before
Woodstein/Watergate. "Well-respected journalist" was an oxymoron
in that era. See any one of the various films made from the play
"The Front Page". The typical reporter [the name "journalist"
was not in common use] was seen as a hard-drinking, expense
account padding, ne'er-do-well who would never make a living in
the real world.

Further, then as now, reporters are a product of their society,
its knowledge, mores, etc., whatever their reportorial cynicism
might be about such. Remember, during the entire presidency of
FDR, 1932-1944, his handicaps resulting from polio were never a
matter of press discussion. The fact of their existence was
known to a lot of people in the country who knew FDR;s history,
but it was never made a "matter of public record" by the press,
with photos and film of him in his wheel chair, or using canes to
mount the podium.

The reporter in Nightfall was a product of his society, seeing
the protagonist scientists as charlatans, foisting a scam on the
public.

Having said all that, I too winced at IA's handling of the
character, but born in 1943, I knew enough about the era IA grew
up in to know whence it was drawn from.

Which is a continuing problem with reading "classic" science
fiction. You have to keep in mind, and ideally be familiar with,
what the world and the US was like *when the piece was written*.
SF authors don't write in a vacuum. Like the reporters I
addressed above, they are a product of their time/society.

For me, starting reading SF in the mid-1950s, I had a lot of
trouble reading the "old classics" of the 19-teens and 1920s.
It was only after I got older, and helped along by IA's annotated
collection "Before the Golden Age", that I was able to understand
and appreciate them. They still seem "quaint" to me, taken in
terms of the SF of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now 00s, but I
understand the milieu in which they were written and appreciate
why they are considered classics.

[PS. I am not among those who consider "Nightfall" IA's best,
but am among those that consider it a real SF classic.]

--
OJ III