"Into Darkness" is a

science-fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, sp ...

novelette by Australian writer

Greg Egan Greg Egan (born 20 August 1961) is an Australian science fiction writer and mathematician, best known for his works of hard science fiction. Egan has won multiple awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the Lo ...

, first published in ''

Asimov's Science Fiction ''Asimov's Science Fiction'' is an American science fiction magazine edited by Sheila Williams and published by Dell Magazines, which is owned by Penny Press. It was launched as a quarterly by Davis Publications in 1977, after obtaining Isaac ...

'' in January 1992. The novelette was included in the collections ''

Axiomatic An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or fi ...

'' in 1995 and '' The Best of Greg Egan'' in 2019.

Plot

A strange

wormhole A wormhole is a hypothetical structure that connects disparate points in spacetime. It can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, different points in time, or both). Wormholes are base ...

is randomly jumping around on the surface of the Earth, but seems to be drawn to crowded areas. No reason for its sudden appearance is known, but some assume it to be an experiment by aliens from the future to get into the past with both ends of the wormhole accidentally collapsing towards their common

barycenter In astronomy, the barycenter (or barycentre; ) is the center of mass of two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit. A barycenter is a dynamical point, not a physical object. It is an important con ...

spacetime In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualiz ...

. The wormhole is composed of two shells, the outer with a radius of one kilometer being called "The Intake" and the inner one with a radius of two hundred meters being called "The Core". Going over "The Intake" forces macroscopic objects like people (with microscopic expections like the flow of blood possible) to only travel further towards "The Core", which allows to leave the wormhole. Every living being inside it during the moment of jump to a new place is killed. Like radioactive nuclei, the duration of the stay of the wormhole at a certain place follows the mathematical law of a

half-time In several team sports, matches are played in two halves. Half-time (also written halftime or half time) is the name given to the interval between the two halves of the match. Typically, after half-time, teams swap ends of the field of play in or ...

of eighteen minutes. The short story follows John Nately, a high-school science teacher, on his eleventh journey from "The Intake" to "The Core", who again risks his life to save that of others.

Translation

The novelette was translated into Czech by Blanka Vykoukalová and Petr Kotrle (1997), Hungarian by József Békési (1999), Romanian by Mihai-Dan Pavelescu, Japanese by Makoto Yamagishi (2000), Spanish by Luis G. Prado (2002), Italian (2003), Spanish (2006), French by Francis Lustman and Quarante-Deux (2006), Chinese (2023) and Korean by Kim Sang-hoon (2024).

Reception

Reviews

Russell Letson, writing in the ''

Locus Magazine ''Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field'', founded in 1968, is an American magazine published monthly in Oakland, California. It is the news organ and trade journal for the English-language science fiction and fantasy fields. ...

'', claims that "the story framework is a tense and effective physical adventure, while at the same time the narrator recognizes the metaphorical properties of the space he is traversing." Karen Burnham writes in ''Greg Egan (Masters of Science Fiction)'', that the short story is "a pure puzzle-solving story."

Awards

The novelette was a

Locus Award The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine '' Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California. The awards are presented at an annual banquet. Originally a poll ...

Nominee for Best SF Novelette in 1993 and reached the 5th place. It also reached the 2nd place of Asimov's Reader Poll in 1993.

Literature

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Into Darkness Australian science fiction short stories 1992 short stories Short stories by Greg Egan