Story about a world where darkness drives people mad

Question

I remember reading a short sci-fi story, perhaps 50 pages or so long, whose name I don't recall.

The details of the story are:

• It is about a world with multiple suns that keep the planet in perpetual light.
• When they're later eclipsed (by another planet?) from all their suns, they all go mad from the darkness and burn the city to the ground.
• I remember them making a big point about millions of stars being visible in the darkness
• There are a lot of references to gravitational theory
• And there was something about a war between astronomers and a religion
• I also remember that the people had quite odd names, too, but I can't remember what specifically was odd about them.

Any ideas what this was? I'd very much like to read it again.

Answer 1

That would be "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov (publication history).

Their planet has multiple suns, and because of the complex interactions between them, they've only recently discovered the "Theory of Universal Gravitation". Since then, they've been able to calculate that an eclipse occurs every two thousand and forty-nine years. That is the only time when it gets dark and the stars are visible.

There is a cult that predicts a time of chaos comes about every two thousand and fifty years, when the sun "enters a cave", when people go mad from the stars and destroy their own civilization.

On a world that's always light, darkness — even a room that's darkened for a couple of minutes — is very stress inducing. That combined with the millions of stars visible suddenly and for the first time (it's pointed out in the story that they're in the middle of the Milky Way, not on an outer arm, like we are) and the realisation that the universe is so much bigger than they knew, is what drives most people insane.

A text can be found here, although I'm not sure as to the legality of that.

Asimov and Robert Silverberg expanded the short story into a novel by the same title.

Answer 2

As the other answer says it's an Asimov short story called Nightfall. I've read it in a collection by the same name "Nightfall and other stories".

The twist ending is not quite as simple as it drives people insane. From what I remember essentially they become desperate for light, any light, and end up burning their whole civilization to the ground to create that light.

Answer 3

This was also the plot of the Van Diesel movie Pitch Black which starred, somewhat incongruently, Judie Dench. Aliens from the id (or some such techno babble) eat people's brains when darkness falls every 400 years.