Can't say I enjoyed the movie version of Nightfall. I used to live at the place where it was filmed (Arcosanti, in Arizona), and know that it was in fact the *perfect* place to film Asimov's story. It's a terrible pity that that isn't what they filmed.

A story set at the end of the universe, eh? The only one I know of that has tried to portray such a setting (realistically; the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is excluded) is Olav Stapledon's "The Starmaker", which is a STAGGERINGLY great book. I just re-read it, and found it almost impossible to believe that it was written in 1937 (How could he write so vividly about ICBMs and nuclear warfare? How could he predict the acceleration in the expansion of the universe?). It easily covers the greatest expanse of any book ever written -- including the entire lifespan of our universe, and many others besides. In the intro to the edition that I have, Brian Aldiss says that there are so many ideas briefly mentioned in Starmaker that any number of them can be expanded into novels; his own "Galaxies like Grains of Sand," he says, is "immitation Starmaker".

Anyhow, the part describing the heroic struggles of the few remaining civilizations during the quiescence of our universe was particularly haunting for me. In Stapledon's universe, the planets are all gone, the stars are long since dead, and the sentient residents of the universe have genetically re-engineered themselves to continue living in the interiors of the still-warm stellar cores. Amazing stuff.

Cheers,

Nathan.