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The Last Question by Issac Asimov [pdf]

by manjana on 6/14/22, 5:46 PM with 74 comments

• by hacknewslogin on 6/14/22, 6:15 PM

  Even better, let Leonard Nimoy read it to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XOtx4sa9k4

• by snowwrestler on 6/16/22, 12:13 PM

  I love to read old sci fi for the anachronisms.

  Interfacing with an advanced computer via teletype is pretty funny. But there are also cultural anachronisms. For example all the people speaking are men except for shrieking kids and a meek wife. And it is a sci fi story that ends in a Bible scene!

  “Golden Age” sci fi stories are great mental puzzles, but also great glimpses into the mindset of the era in which they were written. It’s fun to see what authors thought would change quickly, and what wouldn’t change.

  In this story, space travel and energy development advances quickly. But in 2061 there’s still only one big computer and it takes symbols and teletype to interact with it. People have everything they need, but the population keeps exploding. In short it is a good view into the U.S. of the 1950s: a time of nuclear physics, the space race, and the baby boom.

• by WalterGR on 6/14/22, 6:56 PM

  Also see:

  The Last Question (wikipedia.org)

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675727

  313 points | by thewarpaint | 5 days ago | 156 comments

• by milchek on 6/16/22, 5:24 AM

  For those who haven’t read much Asimov and enjoy short stories like this one, check out his book “The Complete Stories Volume 1.” There are some really entertaining and prescient sci-fi short stories in it.

• by freiherr on 6/16/22, 9:41 AM

  Really enjoyed the read, even though I believe such vision of the future is impossible. We'll just return back to the iron age with the end of fossil fuels.

  For similar vibes I highly recommend my favorite of such speculations into deep future - The Next Ten Billion Years By John Michael Greer [0]

  And some encouraging quoutes:

  >100 years from now

  >Cornucopians still insist that fusion power, artificial intelligence, and interstellar migration will save us any day now, and their opponents still insist that human extinction is imminent, but most people are too busy trying to survive to listen to either group.

  >100 millions years from now

  >They are bipeds, but not even remotely human; instead, they belong to Earth’s third intelligent species. They are distantly descended from the crows of our time, though they look no more like crows than you look like the tree shrews of the middle Cretaceous

  [0]: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-09-05/the-next-ten-b...

• by colanderman on 6/16/22, 5:21 PM

  Multivac also "starred" in my personal favorite as a software engineer, The Machine That Won The War: https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/the-machine-that-won-the-...

• by DOsinga on 6/16/22, 9:46 AM

  Not very realistic I have to say. Who is going to take a 5 dollar bet serious in 2061?

• by sergius on 6/16/22, 1:31 PM

  On similar lines but a bit more ironic is Robert Sheckley's: To ask a Foolish Question

  https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33854

• by raverbashing on 6/16/22, 9:27 AM

  *Isaac Asimov

  But alas, space fairing was much harder in practice than the sci-fi authors expected, so we surf on the web instead. On that aspect, William Gibson and Philip K Dick got it right.

• by mbar84 on 6/16/22, 4:27 PM

  I have done some typographic work for those who would like to make their own print version:

  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y7ar4mtbapk9qd4/AABEe53IbANo3N_45...

• by ww520 on 6/16/22, 6:43 AM

  Ask LaMDA that question.

• by timdiggerm on 6/16/22, 11:45 AM

  A classic in the genre of "Technology is so great, maybe...God is a computer?". See also: Simulation Hypothesis

• by dERtuTOR on 6/16/22, 4:49 AM

  Thank you. It was an enjoyable read. In 39 years, I can't wait to get my hands on the Multivac.

• by apocalypstyx on 6/16/22, 2:27 PM

  There is no single piece of science fiction I despise more than this story.

• by alexpetralia on 6/16/22, 9:47 AM

  Perhaps my favorite fiction story. Man's eternal quest to become God.

• by formerkrogemp on 6/16/22, 4:09 PM

  This short story is always popular with computer folks.