Title: Nightfall #2

Author: Isaac Asimov

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 192

Rating: 4/5

I didn’t realise until I started reading this that it’s essentially the second of two paperbacks that were published because for whatever reason, it was too difficult to publish as a single paperback. The gist here is that after writing a pretty well-received short story towards the start of his career, Asimov worried that he was becoming mostly known for a single story, so he brought together twenty of his best in this collection.

Nightfall #2 contains ten of those twenty stories, along with little introductions by Asimov that go into detail on what inspired the stories and how they came about. The ideas in the stories, along with the fascinating introductions that Asimov supplies, make for cracking reading, even when the stories themselves aren’t great.

It’s funny, really, because Asimov specifically went out of his way to try to bring his best short stories together, but I think that I, Robot is a better short story collection. Both are worth reading I guess, but this is more for hardcore fans and long-time readers.

Learn more about Nightfall 2.