Date: 27 Aug 2017
Location: Reynolds & Linda
August 21, 2017, was a bright and sunny day – perfect weather for viewing a total eclipse of the sun. There was a murmur through the crowd at first contact, when the moon took the first nibble out of the sun. Then it was a matter of checking, from time to time, with our Eclipse Glasses, the progress of the moon across the disk of the sun. Everyone was looking up when the coverage was almost complete and there appeared to be a flash as the last bit of the sun disappeared – that brought about a chorus of Ahhh’s and then applause as the corona appeared and Venus became visible mid-day. It was quiet except for the clicking of camera shutters until a brilliant flash announced the end of totality, bringing about another round of applause.
“The tiny bit of encroaching blackness was perhaps the width of a fingernail, but to the staring watchers it magnified itself into the crack of doom…..The chip in its side had grown to a black encroachment that covered a third of its visible disk…..There came the strange awareness that the last thread of sunlight had thinned out and snapped….. With the slow fascination of fear, he turned his eyes toward the bloodcurdling blackness of the sky….. Through it shown the Stars….. There were thousands of them, blazing with incredible power, one next to another next to another next to another, an endless wall of them, forming a dazzling shield of terrifying light that filled the entire heavens….. They hammered at the roots of his being. They beat like flails against his brain. Their icy monstrous light was like a million great gongs going off at once….. He was going mad, and he knew it, and somewhere deep inside, a bit of sanity was screaming, struggling to fight off the hopeless flood of black terror.”
Two very different reactions to the same phenomena, a total solar eclipse. Two very different realities.
Not very far in our own past, total solar eclipses were seen as important omens, for good and evil. In one instance, two armies in battle saw it as a sign to lay down their weapons and make peace. It is not too much of a stretch to believe people could be driven mad by something they didn’t understand – or is it? That was the essence of the discussion at the Happy Bookers meeting in August. It was not a long discussion because there were not many in attendance and not all had read the book. Some of us learned that there were two Nightfalls, one a short story by Asimov, and the other this month’s book and some felt the former was better.
— Reynolds