In honor of the tetrad of blood moon lunar eclipses coming up in the next seventeen months, I would like to refer you wordhuggers to Isaac Asimov's sci-fi novel "Nightfall." During one of those precious free blocks of time in my college career, I found myself in the library "sample area" of books. This small alcove hosted popular books in numerous genres. It was a nice place to sit in between classes and just read for an hour.
"Nightfall" is on my mind lately due to the unique upcoming lunar eclipses (the first one being tonight). Forgive me my short summary and analysis, as it has been years since I read the book, and I do not own it to be citing any specific passages.
Summarily, "Nightfall" takes place on a planet with six suns. What with all of these suns, the planet is under constant light. The inhabitants have never experienced true darkness -- except in the case of an amusement park ride which acts as a foreshadowing of the end of the book. The story is told from multiple perspectives: an astronomer, an archaeologist, and (if I recall correctly) a religious guy.
The astronomer is studying a phenomenon in the sky. The archaeologist is studying the old civilizations, which she discovers destroyed themselves every thousand years or so and built a new civilization on top of the old. How did it happen, she wonders? What happened every thousand years that made them destroy themselves? The religious guy knows what's happening, and his religion has always known, and he has a plan.
Essentially, what happens is, you guessed it, AN ECLIPSE! This occurs when five suns have set, and only one remains, and then some strange orbiting asteroid (comes around every thousand years) totally eclipses it. The archaeologist and astronomer have just figured it out when the world goes dark. Civilization destroys itself again. The religious guy takes control when the lights come back on.
The most interesting part of the novel is how Asimov shows the people go completely insane. That aforementioned amusement park ride had been closed because people went insane when faced with complete darkness.
If you want to get a good feel of what the climax is like, read Lord Byron's poem "Darkness." Then enjoy the blood moons approaching. Go outside, look at the red moon, and feel creeped out. Don't go insane though. That would be weird.
