Oblus ina’ti Sepan Eti.

There are things in our lives that shape us, be it movies, music, games, or books. Today, we’re going to talk about one book that left an impression, that survived three decades in my brain, and that I first heard it when I was around eleven. Little did I know then that it’d shape my writing when I was older. This isn’t something that is a bedrock of influence, not like the movie Legend, The Empire Strikes Back, or Mass Effect, but it is something that percolated over time, a subtle scent flavoring the air.

Before we jump to it, I would be remiss if I didn’t do a plug here. Man of Fury is coming out on the 26th of October! It’s the third book in the series, and my 11th overall. Preorder today before you’re put on the Wanted Poster.

The evil have come to play, one bloody card at a time.

Man of Fury

Man of Fury: Amazon

Now, back to the story…

I heard this book in the early ’90s, back when audiobooks came on cassettes. Yeah, that’s how far back we’re going. My dad was a truck driver for about five years, and during the summers, he’d take us out for a few weeks at a time. One of the things he introduced me to, besides great movies like The Pelican Brief, was Nightfall. What’s really cool about this story is that the planet is orbited by six suns, and there’s always light. But before we get into the weeds, let’s have some context.

Nightfall was a short story originally written by Isaac Asimov, and it was later made into a full-length novel by Robert Silverberg and Isaac Asimov. It’s this story I’m talking about. I’ve never read the original Asimov story, but I will, eventually. This blog post isn’t going to be a deep-dive book review, but it is a review of sorts, leading up to the premise of the story. Below is what I remember from the story, but it’s been thirty years since I heard it, and at least a decade since I read it, but that’s more to do with how difficult it is to track down this book. More on that later.

Books of the Dire Universe

The story takes place on the world of Kalgash, where there are many different characters we follow, all seeking the same answers; they just don’t know it yet. Siferra 89—and yes, their last names are numbers, which I found quirky and unique—is an archeologist. She’s excavating a site when a sudden sandstorm sneaks up on them. Instead of dumping sand on the ruins, the wind came in and scooped it out, revealing several thousand of years of civilization, far more than they ever considered possible. In fact, instead of the speculated six or seven civilizations, it shows closer to thirteen. From preliminary findings, every preceding civilization was destroyed by fire. They also discover tablets that speak about the gods destroying the world with holy fire from the Stars every 2,000 years. She collects the tablets and takes them back to the university.

Sheerin 501 is a psychologist, and he’s called in to investigate a new ride/ attraction that opened, and it’s called the Tunnel of Mystery. Darkness isn’t natural on Kalgash—minus enclosed spaces like caves and the like. People exit the ride in a state of psychosis, and the city is forced to shut the ride down. Enter Sheerin, who takes the ride himself, and while he comes out relatively unscathed, he is pale and sweating, and demands the ride be shut down. Throughout the rest of the book, he suffers from recurring panic attacks from the ride, and he even sleeps using their versions of night lights.

In another part of the story, we’re following scientists at a university, and one of note is Beenay 25, an astronomer who tracks the movement of Kalgash. He discovers anomalous readings in their orbit when he runs the numbers through the Theory of Universal Gravitation, which is their doctrine made by Athor 77, his mentor. Beenay consults with his friend, Theremon 762, (who writes in the local paper), about what he should do. With reluctance, Beenay confronts Athor 77. The anomaly? An unaccounted celestial body.

And then, you have the Apostles of Flames, religious fanatics that have been preaching doom and gloom, and the end of the world. They come out publicly and say the gods are getting ready to destroy the world, and they have calculated the exact date. They have roughly thirteen months to prepare for the end. Their prophecy is pretty much that the gods come out and swallow the suns, casting their world in darkness, and burn them with the Stars.

As the story progresses, the scientists come out and confirm that there’s indeed a second celestial body, what they dub as Kalgash 2, and that it’s expected to enter their orbit/ eclipse the suns, casting the world in darkness. They also determine the timeline of all destroyed civilizations, every 2,049 years, which coincides with what the Apostles of Flames are saying.

This is the first third of the book. Then, Nightfall happens. Darkness descends, and madness reigns as the stars come out, and then the holy fire… The rest of the story is what happens during the darkness and the time after.

When I was eleven, I didn’t care about science or all that jazz, but this book really intrigued me, captured my attention while I was strapped in a seat, hurtling down the road in a semi. Back before cellphones, iPads, Game Boy, or anything else to occupy your time with, all you had was audiobooks or the radio. Who knew that science could be interesting?

Wanted Poster: Hand it to someone who should’ve been here.

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But I think more than the science of the story, the religion or archeology, was my intrigue with the characters. It was they who made the story. And with Theremon’s betrayal, and Siferra’s fiery disposition, and the zealotry of the Apostles of Flames, it made for a nice, chaotic bundle of personalities.

So, I listened to this story. And I listened to others, being introduced to Louis L’Amour and the Chick Bowdrie stories, and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, which, coupled with Clint Eastwood’s westerns, later influenced my Maro Prakk Novella Series. I’m almost positive there were other books I listened to; I’m sure he had a lot, but these are the ones that stuck with me.

And it influenced me many years later, when I’d forgotten about such stories, when they were less memory and more DNA. The religious zealots? You can find those in the Dark Legacy Series with Glato and his quest for communion with his god, and in the Maro Prakk Novella Series, with the Sacral Compendium and the Houses of the Gods. The science? In my Warmaster Series, though to be fair, it’s pretty soft science because let’s face it, I find science a rather dull subject. There are other nods to Nightfall, but you have to read my books to see them.

The book, Nightfall, well, that’s a different story. It’s hard to track down. Most of the time, when you search for Nightfall, it comes back with Asimov’s short story and not the novel. There were limited reprints, which for the life of me, I can’t understand. If you’re lucky, you can find an ebook of it, but good luck. You can’t find the audiobook anywhere because the cassette was never cleared, and no recreation exists.

While I would love to make an audiobook of it, legally, I can’t. Nor can I record it in my home studio and put it on Substack. Technically, I can’t record it just for me, either. It sucks, but there it is.

However, I encourage you to search for this book. You might find a used copy on Amazon. I did. In fact, I found a used paperback and a hardback. At first, I wasn’t going to buy the hardback, but I got to thinking about it. If the paperback was damaged, I’d be back to finding another. So, I forked out the $35 for it. Guess what? It came in the plastic wrapping. Never before used. I cracked it open, looked at the copyright page, and saw it was a first-print edition, November 1990. What a find! That bad boy will go on my shelf, and it’ll be treasured for years to come.

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What I like about Nightfall, the story, is that no one group is absolutely correct. They’re all right, and they’re all wrong. And that, more than anything, is what I take to heart when writing my characters and stories. There may be one character who is absolutely right in all my stories, and he still makes mistakes. It’s about navigating their world and circumstances to the best of their abilities, and nothing is ever pretty or clean. And that’s kind of how life is. We’re doing our best in the grind, making choices based on what’s available, and just trying to survive, until we have our own Nightfall…

Oblus ina’ti Sepan Eti.

Nightfall | The Stars That Burn