

The Last Question - wskinner
http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm

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As much as I love "The Last Question," My favorite Asimov short story is
"Profession" (I read it in the same story anthology as "The Last Question):
<http://www.abelard.org/asimov.php>

Described on that site as "an allegorical description of the manner in which
education currently functions in our primitive western societies," I found it
(as a child/early teen especially) to be one of his more engaging and relevant
works. Check it out if you get a chance, although note that it's somewhat
longer than "The Last Question."

~~~
IvyMike
"Profession" is the first thing I think about whenever I start to think about
my own career development.

In the end, the question is which kind of engineer do I really want to be? And
my answer is that the world has enough Amand Trevelyans. I want to be George
Platen.

------
alanh
Previously discussed on HN, including:

Most comments, over a year ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691113>

4 years previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595419>

~~~
Apocryphon
How poetic that this story be the one to be reposted and retold, again and
again, until-

~~~
smoyer
Until the entropy of HN makes it impossible to post or read a final time?

------
michielvoo
Well worth reading for the (unexpected) outcome, and the story has an
underlying theory that has been discussed on HN before (you will find out
which theory that is by reading the story, I don't want to spoil it).

Also interesting is that Asimov starts out with the concept of a huge
supercomputer, named MULTIVAC (which is not unexpected given that it was
written in the 50's), but in the story the 'AC' gradually evolves into a
system of interconnected computers.

~~~
gruseom
What underlying theory do you have in mind? It seems like Nietzsche's eternal
recurrence to me.

~~~
michielvoo
I detect two theories relevant to HN readers.

Spoilers ahead...

.

.

.

You have been warned...

.

The story moves towards a technological singularity [1]. This is a term Asimov
could have been familar with at the time of writing. The name MULTIVAC is
obviously inspired by the ENIAC and UNIVAC. So it's safe to assume Asimov was
aware of the writings of Von Neumann.

The unintended consequence of creating this artificial intelligence is
creation as described in Genesis.

I interpret the underlying message of this story to be 'our reality is a
simulated reality [2]' since it was created by AI. I don't know if Asimov
would have agreed.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality>

~~~
Aldream
While reading this short story, I also couldn't help myself from thinking
about these two articles posted few days ago, and their underlying connection:
\- "Physicists To Test If Universe Is A Computer Simulation"
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5562156>). \- "European Researchers Win
$1.3 Billion To Simulate The Human Brain"
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5575312>)

------
gmaslov
I was inordinately tickled to discover that Wolfram|Alpha's database includes
this question as an easter egg.

~~~
habosa
Link for the curious:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=What+is+the+last+questi...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=What+is+the+last+question%3F)

~~~
theon144
I think he meant

[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+may+entropy+be+rev...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+may+entropy+be+reversed%3F)

~~~
kevinpet
What's really awesome about this is that it doesn't appear to be an easter
egg. WA simply interprets this unusual question as being a reference to
something it knows about.

~~~
habosa
I think it has to be an easter egg considering that WA does not provide
answers to many "How .... ?" questions. It's much more of a service for "What"
questions. But I do like that it's displayed like any other answer. It gives a
Watson feeling.

------
lowmagnet
This is still my favorite Asimov story, and I've a big chunk of his canon.

~~~
dreen
It's not only yours and mine favorite - its also a favorite of Asimov himself.
Here is what he written about The Last Question in the 1973 release of "The
Best of Isaac Asimov":

‘The Last Question’ is my personal favorite, the one story I made sure would
not be omitted from this collection. Why is it my favorite? For one thing I
got the idea all at once and didn’t have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in
white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any
story to any writer. Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers.
Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can write them the name of a story,
which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They
don’t remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably
‘The Last Question’. This has reached the point where I recently received a
long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, ‘Dr. Asimov, there’s
a story I think you wrote, whose title I can’t remember–’ at which point I
interrupted to tell him it was ‘The Last Question’ and when I described the
plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I
could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles. No other story I have
written has anything like this effect on my readers—producing at once an
unshakeable memory of the plot and an unshakeable forgettery of the title and
even author. I think it may be that the story fills them so frighteningly
full, that they can retain none of the side-issues.

~~~
geon
> I got the idea all at once and didn’t have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it
> in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears
> any story to any writer.

I have had that experience about code twice. The first was when I "got" how I
could use recursion to draw a Koch curve fractal. That was in highschool,
using VB5. The second time a few years later, when I (on my own) came up with
the trie datastructure. I used it to count the frequencies of words in The
Hichhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

------
alinajaf
If you liked this, you will love Greg Egans _Diaspora_.

~~~
some_googler
Or Clarke's Childhood's End...

~~~
thetylerhayes
So very, very good.

I would also recommend The Light of Other Days.

~~~
seren
What I found astonishing with the Light of Other Days is that with the massive
sharing of pictures and videos on social network and the advent of Google
Glass, it seems that at a point in the near future will be able to "browse"
what's currently happening in the world from multi view point in real time. At
the time it was released it was clearly science fiction, now not so much, it
seems.

------
elliptic
Odd that this is Asimov's favorite - it seems so inferior to Nightfall, or The
Dead Past, or probably some others that I am forgetting.

~~~
riffraff
thank you for reminding me of a couple more great stories!

But, if you believe these are superior writings to the one in TFA you should
probably expand on why.

IMO The Last Question is so loved because it hits readers with a much stronger
emotional force than Nightfall or The Dead Past. Possibly it's the usage of
that specific formula, at the end, which already carries so much weight.

I, for one, believe only another short fiction had the same effect on me when
i first read it as a kid: Frederic Brown's "Sentry".

~~~
elliptic
Well, that's fair. I suppose I don't in general think much of stories that are
essentially philosophical inquiries, with a little bit of "plot" added on. I'm
just not emotionally affected by the "Wow" at the end, like I was in
Nightfall, or how I was affected by the dead child aspect of "The Dead Past."

Also, I think that "The Dead Past" really demonstrates the apex of Asimov's
technical writing ability in a way that the format of "The Last Question"
doesn't really allow.

------
Apreche
A true classic. This comes up in discussions among my friends often. It's at
the point where someone can just say "that's the Last Question," and everyone
knows.

------
CurtMonash
It's a great story because it's a straightforward technological speculation
which then takes a twist.

That said, Arthur C. Clarke's The Star --
<http://www.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf> \-- is weaker on the
technology but stronger on the heartstring-tugging. It is also a great story,
in a similar vein.

And relevant to The Star, but not really in the same vein, there's James
Blish's novel A Case of Conscience ...
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Case_of_Conscience>

------
sigkill
There's another piece called "The Last Answer" -
<http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-answer/> which is pretty awesome in its
own right.

~~~
notahacker
I like Fredric Brown's _Answer_ which is a more cynical take on the Question
theme... <http://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html>

------
greatquux
The last time this discussion came up, someone posted a link to the related-
but-not-really-but-still-a-good-story "The Last Answer"
<http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-answer/> and I greatly enjoyed reading
it.

------
bayesianhorse
Silence must fall when the last question is asked.

~~~
mindcrime
On the Fields of Trenzalore, on the Fall of the Eleventh, when no living
creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked...

~~~
fennecfoxen
Yes, but that's the __first __question in the universe, not the final
question.

~~~
mindcrime
Apparently it's going to be the last as well. Otherwise, why are they trying
so hard to stop it? :-)

~~~
fennecfoxen
Well. There's definitely a good chance it will be the last question for
Eleven.

~~~
mindcrime
"Eleven is the best. You'll cry your eyes out".

------
dvanduzer
Does anyone know what happened to multivax.com?

------
RaSoJo
Wow! The ending literally made me feel giddy. I got goosebumps.

------
Fzzr
For something a little lighter, "The Last-but-One Question" by Sam Hughes.
<http://qntm.org/question>

------
stat
I reformatted the story for better readability and included audio, read by
Henry Goodman:
[https://googledrive.com/host/0B2j3XwTC5tA6dUg5QXBTQVNtV2c/Th...](https://googledrive.com/host/0B2j3XwTC5tA6dUg5QXBTQVNtV2c/TheLastQuestion.html)

------
trumbitta2
And now I know where Charles Stross did find inspiration for Accelerando.

Great story.

------
_kst_
Isn't this a copyright violation, or has the story entered the public domain?

------
DaNmarner
The story boils down to:

1\. Is the second law of thermodynamic wrong? 2\. Does P equals NP (or, if 1
is true, then how and how long will it take to solve it?) 3\. What's God?

~~~
GuiA
Oh goodness, this hilarious.

Someone posting a link to a short story by one of the greatest SF writers all
of time, whose writings spawned entire threads of reflexion and discussion in
many disciplines; and a HN comment being a dismissive tl;dr.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I didn't find the comment to be dismissive actually. What's wrong with writing
a story that explores the boundaries of science and god? That must have been a
pretty natural thing for someone living in Asimov's era to do.

------
j0j0r0
i saw this as a little kid with my dad as a slide show at a
planetarium...(omnisphere in wichita, ks)

as a kid, it was ok, but slightly boring until the very end, when after
minutes of complete darkness very bright lights came and the planetarium stars
went spinning ... it made the whole room seem to spin.

i remembered it all that time, but could never discover who wrote it...

so, thanks.

------
AlexanderDhoore
42

------
_debug_
What a waste of time that was! I felt greatly cheated by the ending. It was
exactly as if I had met a friendly, neatly dressed, smiling person on the
street who, after 5 minutes, turned out to be peddling his religion after all.

Honestly, I have thought of much better stories myself. I remember GREATLY
enjoying Asimov as a teenager, and I am pretty sure this is not his best
story.

~~~
eksith
Asimov, as mentioned previously, was an atheist.

The ending was a powerful metaphor of what it may mean to know all and how
such an all knowing entity may act when there is no one else around to share
this existence.

This story isn't about religion wherein the origin of life and all that exists
is explained on the basis of faith. This is a story on how such an origin can
take place in a setting of speculative fiction that doesn't push faith at all.
I feel sorry for you that you couldn't enjoy the ending or understand Asimov
for that matter.

~~~
_debug_
The mention of that particular metaphor "Let there be light" is quite
significant and is the thing that repulses me. I felt me that even the subtle
negation of God by introducing a Deus Ex Machina (literally) is rooted in the
notion of his particular Christian God that he is negating. It only gives
strength to the other fiction by trying to negate it.

The wow-isnt-the-ending-"clever" negation of an ending actually fell flat for
me. It really is a trite device if you think about it.

I feel sorry for you and all others who _think_ they feel sorry for me because
I have a differing opinion which you presume is inferior. In reality, I
believe your opinion is probably just conforming rather than well thought-out
: you you you think it's awesome, but I question whether you are even thinking
and just think it's awesome because it's Asimov. That's no different from the
premium a shopper pays for Prada because, duh, it's Prada.

~~~
eksith
Since this is going the same pattern as all other internet discussions (and
since you assume an awful lot about people who disagree with _you_ ) I'll just
refer you to the wisdom of The Dude: "Well, that's like your opinion, man."

