"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was reprinted in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973) and Robot Dreams (1986), as well as the retrospective Opus 100 (1969). It is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac.
History
In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralization that characterised computation technology planning in the 1950s to an ultimate centrally managed global computer. Asimov considered this story to be the best he wrote, placing it just higher than "The Ugly Little Boy" and "The Bicentennial Man." After seeing a planetarium adaptation, Asimov "privately" concluded that this story was his best science fiction yet written. "The Last Question" ranks with "Nightfall" and other stories as one of Asimov's best-known and most acclaimed short stories. Overall, it is considered to be one of the greatest science fiction short stories ever written. The story was adapted for the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York in 1969, under the direction of Ian C. McLennan, although it was first adapted for the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University in 1966, as Asimov wrote in his autobiography In Joy Still Felt. The Abrams Planetarium show is voiced by Leonard Nimoy. A reading of the story can also be periodically heard on BBC 7 radio. The most recent was Saturday 10 March 2007.
Plot summary
The story deals with the development of a computer called Multivac and its relationship with humanity through the course of seven historic settings. The first is set in the year 2061. In each of the first six scenes a character presents the computer with a question, namely as to how the threat to worthwhile continued human existence posed by heat death can be averted. As the characters in the story recognize, the question is equivalent to: "Can the workings of the second law of thermodynamics (used in the story as the increase of the entropy of the universe), be reversed?" In each case the computer finds itself unable to reply due to having "insufficient data for a meaningful answer". The final twist ending is considered one of the greatest conclusions in science fiction.
See also
External links
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