11 ms·
If you haven’t read it before, don’t read the Wikipedia summary; read the actual story. It’s easy to google and pretty short. Isaac Asimov said it was his favo
by pfarrell 4y ago
If you haven’t read it before, don’t read the Wikipedia summary; read the actual story. It’s easy to google and pretty short.
Isaac Asimov said it was his favorite story he’d written. He imagines the entire history of the future of humanity, to the end of time, in a few pages. Really a marvelous story.
- jjice 4y agoDamn it, I wish I read this comment before I read the summary. I had chills at the end. Maybe I should read some Asimov...
- pfarrell 4y agoWe’ll maybe you might enjoy listening to Leonard Nimoy reading it: https://youtu.be/8XOtx4sa9k4 https://youtu.be/8XOtx4sa9k4
- codechicago277 4y agoSee also “The last answer” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Answer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Answer Full text: https://highexistence.com/the-last-answer-short-story/ https://highexistence.com/the-last-answer-short-story/ These 2 are my favorite Asimov stories.
- gpvos 4y agoThanks. I had read The Last Question already, but am among today's 10_000 for this story.
- gpvos 4y agoI have now read it. Interesting. The main theme is not entirely new to me; without spoiling anything, I hope I can say that the long-form, not yet finished web comic Gunnerkrigg Court[0] touches on a very similar idea as one of its main themes. [0] https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1 https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1
- moritonal 4y agoNice xkcd reference.
- ahazred8ta 4y agoFor completeness, the Xkcd "Isaac in grade school" comic: https://xkcd.com/1448/#isaac https://xkcd.com/1448/#isaac
- windowshopping 4y agoNah, this story is just exceptionally good. Asimov was a fine writer, but this story was his crowning achievement in short fiction and he knew it too. You can read his other things and none of them will give the same feeling. Nightfall is a decent story though. But yeah, The Last Question is in a league of its own. It's one of my favorite short stories ever along with The Library of Babel by Borges, The Great Automatic Grammatizator by Roald Dahl, and "Repent, Harlequin!" said the Tick-Tock Man by Harlan Ellison.
- teekert 4y agoIf you like these kind of "Mind blown", "Goose bumps" stories, read some Ted Chiang. Really stories that stick with you. I love this whole book: [0] If you like a bit longer stories, try some Greg Egan. Or, his book with short stories is also really nice: [1] [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Others https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_L... [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156783.Axiomatic https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156783.Axiomatic
- sky-kedge0749 4y agoI want to second or third the recommendation for Ted Chiang. Basically all of Chiang's stories could go on any "best short stories" list.
- numlocked 4y agoThank you for the recommendations! I've read the Borges, but the other two were new to me and were a great way to start my day. The sibling comment also wisely recommends Ted Chiang. "Exhalation" is probably the canonical equivalent to The Last Question.
- aerovistae 4y agoYep I enjoyed Exhalation a lot. Good collection and great story.
- flir 4y agoYou probably won't get chills from anything else he wrote (except, maybe, Nightfall). But you should dip your toe in with some short stories.
- TMWNN 4y ago>If you haven’t read it before, don’t read the Wikipedia summary; read the actual story. Read it from the original publication: <https://archive.org/details/Science_Fiction_Quarterly_New_Series_v04n05_1956-11_slpn/page/n5/mode/1up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/Science_Fiction_Quarterly_New_Se...>
- zw123456 4y agoOMG, I loved the original scan of this, wow, flash backs for me!!! Thank you soooo much. BTW, anyone just cruising by this post, it might be just me, but the advertisements at the very end of it are so dear. Just take a peek, so funny!
- cwillu 4y agoUse YOUR AMAZING physic (soul) powers NOW!! Why “Develop” for years??? MONEY? HEALTH? LOVE? NOTHING IS HOPELESS. Remarkable NEW APPROACH (demonstrated by Jesus) now verified by modern science. Oy vey…
- aasasd 4y agoNotably, the science fiction magazine had ads for people who are way into their middle age.
- ghaff 4y agoSomehow I don't think you'd be running the ad at the bottom of page 2 today.
- earthboundkid 4y agoIt’s an atheist’s most religious dream to think of becoming one’s own creator. It’s nonsense, of course, but it definitely blew my mind reading it as a child. What set the parameters that the ultimate computer must work within? The ultimate computer can reverse entropy, but it can’t make its own reality. There are limits to the power of knowledge.
- throwaway892238 4y agoCreator in what sense though? Evolution is slow enough that there was never one point at which we suddenly came into being. First we were energy, then we were energy forming into chemicals, then we were chemicals forming into chemicals with rigid structures, then we were chemicals with rigid structures forming more complex structures, etc, until we got to here. Each iteration creates the next iteration, constantly, always. We are always giving birth to ourselves with a teeny tiny change. There is no distinction between a human being and a gas cloud except a couple billion years of iteration. Since we are always creating ourselves, and whatever created the universe also created us, then we probably created the universe, and are the universe, and are creating it still. We are the creator and the created. It's mobius bagels all the way down.
- hoseja 4y agoWell perhaps if you become omni(scient/present/potent) enough, you can subtly influence that process to your desired goal. Evolution is very random in the end.
- shlurpy 4y agoGoedels incompleteness seems to me to disprove such omni, and if you are stuck thinking by our best models of thinking, its annoying exponential. Basically, to think about a universe enough to predict outcomes, you have to simulate it. To figure out which universe leads to a desired outcone, it seems like you would have to simulate most of the ones that do not as well. So if we presuppose the existance of a creator, maybe we are one of the failed universe thought experiments as she tries to make her intended universe?
- chasil 4y agoThere is an allusion to this in a recent YouTube video on the end of the universe, and the vanishingly small timeframe that life can exist within it as we understand. Maybe this is a comfort. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA
- mmustapic 4y ago"With the death of the last star, the age of starlight comes to an end"
- captn3m0 4y agoThere's some recordings on YouTube as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0
- wutbrodo 4y agoThis was the story that got me hooked on Asimov as a kid
- ghaff 4y agoWhen I put together a list of the "best" SF shorts a while back by author, this was my choice for Asimov. (IMO I can make an argument for "Nightfall" but that's a novella and other things being equal I was prioritizing shorter works.) That said, Asimov has a lot of good short stories including quite a few of his robot stories.
- werds 4y agoplease share your full list with us.
- ghaff 4y agohttps://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/10/80-authors-80-science-fiction-stories.html https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/10/80-authors-80-science-... This list and the shorter prior one were also on HN at some point.
- jerf 4y agoNightfall was also a 13,000 word short story, which was turned into a novella. Many, including me, consider it much tighter. That looks to be about 3-4x the length of The Last Question, though, so I think you're still well justified.
- ghaff 4y ago13,000 words is a novelette by the Hugo definition (not novella as I wrote). And I think the expanded version is considered a novel. In any case, I agree that the original was better.
- Isamu 4y agoI remember this from a Planetarium laser light show where this was narrated and there were cool projected abstract visuals. Must have been in the 70’s. That’s entertainment!
- pnt12 4y agoThanks for the heads up: it truly is worth reading.