Cover of The Last Question

The Last Question

Isaac Asimov
#181 science fiction
66.4 score
32 mentions
19 threads
31 commenters
Score Breakdown
Component Scores — Weighted Analysis
Sentiment
48.2
Mildly Positive
Substance
58.0
Substantive
Diversity
100.0
Extremely Diverse
Story Qual.
76.7
High-Quality
Discussions · 9 threads
jaybosamiya · hn↗

Might I point you to this extremely short story: The Last Question, by Isaac Asimov [1] The reason I bring this up is because of the "always" Link(s): [1] http://multivax.com/last_question.html

causality0 · hn↗

I fed it The Last Question. While the resulting summary is impressive, I suspect there may be some cheating/plagiarism going on because it includes commentary with no origin in the text. The Last Question is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov about two attendants of Multivac, a giant computer, who make a bet over highballs. The question they ask is whether mankind will ever be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age. The story follows the question through the centuries as mankind develops interstellar travel and builds a better and more…

utopcell · hn↗

Adding to this Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" [1]. [1] https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html

TeMPOraL · hn↗

> Certainly everyone will die, no matter what. There is no materialist vision of immortality that can work in a universe with a finite life span. Unless of course, we'll figure out the answer to the Last Question ;). ( http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html )

DuskStar · hn↗

Probably not. If I recall correctly, Culture Minds could create mass from nothing, travel significantly faster than light, existed mostly in "hyperspace", and were actively working on the ability to travel between universes. (As shown in "Excession") And they did it in < 10000 years, whereas the AI in "The last Question" took until significantly past the heat death of the universe to figure out the whole "mass from nothing" problem.

noir_lord · hn↗

Oooh, you just reminded me of this one. http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm Pretty much has to be the most powerful AI (as it reboots the entire known universe).

riffraff · hn↗

interestingly enough, there is a FAQ entry for this which goes like """ There's this really neat story by Asimov, but I can't remember the title... The story is probably "The Last Question". It can be found in a number of Asimov's anthologies (it was his favorite of his own stories, after all): Nine Tomorrows Opus 100 The Best of Isaac Asimov The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov Robot Dreams The Complete Stories, volume 1 The Asimov Chronicles It is also found in a number of anthologies not consisting entirely of stories by Asimov. There is a mathematical possibility that you're…

irrational · hn↗

In a short story, isn’t the last sentence just as important? For example, it is the last sentences of The Last Question by Asimov and The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke that make the stories. I’ll always remember the last sentences, I have no idea what the first sentences are (despite rereading both recently).

KronisLV · hn↗

> Have we reached that level of the civilisation that goes extinct, for forgetting how its own inner machines work? This thought was expressed in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Last Question" [PDF]: https://physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf > Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point…

sergiotapia · hn↗

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov Shows humanity over the centuries as this one AI becomes more and more prescient and helpful. It never turns bad but instead shows how this tool becomes more and more opaque until humans don't really need to service it at all. It's really cool and a short read.

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