Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. NIGHTFALL (Pan, #4.99).

* ISAAC ASIMOV was one of the greatest science-fiction writers, and in

Nightfall he wrote one of the most memorable and resonant

science-fiction short stories. But that was in 1941, long before he

started collaborating with the likes of Robert Silverberg and producing

some of the longest and most boring books in the genre. This Nightfall,

written in 1990, is a bloated expansion (to 352 pages) of the original's

central idea of a civilisation continually lit by six suns, having no

concept of darkness and which is collectively driven mad when all of the

suns are eclipsed and the stars come out to play.

The simple but potent conceit of the short story is here bulked out

with ponderous, politically allegorical subplots that add nothing but

length and reduce its sombre beauty to merely another example of the

hectoring New Right sci-fi that flourished in the Reagan-Bush years.

This book may perhaps be read long after the original is forgotten --

but not until. -- I. B.