Re: equinox

On Thu, 24 Sep 1998 19:21:04 -0400 Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> writes:
>Pablo Flores wrote:
>> I once began to think, just as an exercise, about how the seasons
>would go
>> on in a planet with two or more suns.
>
>A great story to read relating to this is Asimov's _Nightfall_ (?),
>there's also a book by Asimov based on that short story.  It's about a
>planet with *six* suns, arranged in such a way that there is never
>night, altho there are times when only the dimmest of the six is in
>the
>sky.  The people do not have any idea of stars, and are pathologically
>afraid of the dark.  Just being in a darkened room is enough to drive
>some insane!  Anyways, there is a dark planet orbiting their planet,
>which was discovered on the basis of gravitational anomolies in their
>planet's orbit.  Every 2,000 years or so, during the period when only
>one sun is in the sky, that sun is eclipsed by the dark planet.  For a
>few brief hours, their planet is plunged into night, and they are
>exposed to the STARS, unfortunately for them, their in the middle of a
>massive star-cluster.  This is too much for them, and it destroys
>their
>minds, many are left insane.  So, every 2000 years, their civilization
>is destroyed, and a new one begins.  A few who had hidden inside,
>warned
>either by cryptic legends from the previous Nightfall, or by the
>discovery, via gravitational studies, of the Dark Planet and
>prediction
>of the Nightfall, tried to rebuild civilization.  It's a great
>story/book (the book goes into more detail about the aftermath of
>Nightfall).  Imagine a language with no word for star!
I love the book!  The only problem with it is that it goes so deep into
the minds of the people on Kalgash (i think it's called Lagash in the
short story) and their perpetual-light mindset that just reading it made
me afraid of the dark for a day or so!

-Stephen (Steg)

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