Headscratchers / Nightfall (1941)

• Darkness is such an incomprehensible and unfamilar concept to the people of Lagash that it must be explained to one of the characters as if it is a radical scientific concept, the development of a torch is bizarre new technology, and they appear to have a culture-wide fear of entering dark spaces like caves. They have six suns in the sky and near constant daylight, so, fair enough there. Only...have these people never developed mining? They live in a society roughly equivalent to the mid-20th century United States, which suggests a certain level of industrialisation, which in turn suggests a certain level of access to minerals like coal... which are largely found by digging underground, and the further you go underground, the less natural sunlight you have access to. So while nightfall would absolutely be an alien concept to these people, surely at least some of them would have some regular exposure to darkness.