…The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.. W Shakespeare - The Tempest Act 4:1 The Sun Never Sets began with a book, The Invention of Morel , by Adolfo Bioy Casares. The novel is set on an island presided over by an inventor whose machine creates layers of illusion. Today we might call this virtual reality. The Invention of Morel is an example of a literary trope – the island dominated by a magician or magus - that can be traced all the way back to the Homer’s Odyssey , and takes in Arthurian Avalon, Shakespeare’s The Tempest , and works by modern authors such as HG Wells and John Fowles. It appears in cinema in The Forbidden Planet and Tarkovsky’s Solaris . Such islands may be reached in many ways, by air, by sea, and under various, often involuntary, circumstances, as an exile, as a refugee, by chance. The island may be a mirage or an illusion, such as Crockerland, enchanted like Aeaea, or merely barren like Clipperton. Magi too are a mixed bunch, from John Dee, who invented the British Empire, to the enchantress Circe, and the monstrous lighthouse keeper Victoriano Álvarez. In the end, some islands at least must be abandoned, either temporarily like Tristan da Cunha or, in the case of St Kilda, forever. The Sun Never Sets addresses the trope obliquely, in a series of shrine-like stations that combine painting with boites-en-valises, the latter animated by video. Islands and magi abound in these little theatres, amidst references to The Tempest , the horrors and follies of the age of empires, and the post-imperial crisis that still afflicts our own small island.