9 ms·
Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
- tempodox 6mo agoThis is somehow funny. A computer that can answer questions like that and its interface is still a teletype. They should have let the computer design its interface.
- jasongill 6mo agoThis is one of those stories, just like the SR-71 "ground speed check" story, that every single time I see it posted I just have to read the entire thing again. I love it.
- markus_zhang 6mo agoHow about this one? https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/Issue4-8.html https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/Issue4-8.h...
- b3lvedere 6mo agoThat was an awesome read. Thanks.
- ggerules 6mo agoYes! Thanks for posting! This gives the feel of what my career looked like in the 80s and early 90s.
- markus_zhang 6mo agoMan you should share your story. I got through a few Linux device driver labs but the more I read the less I understand. Even the keyboard driver or the tty driver are thousands of lines long. I don’t know how people managed to write graphics card drivers back in the day. In the 80d it’s going to be all assembly code too, I think. They are more black magic than the non-driver kernel components. I can at least understand the concept of kernel components such as VFS/Scheduler and read legacy kernel code without too much trouble, but drivers, even those in Linux 0.12 back in 1991, are crazily hard for me.
- jihadjihad 6mo agoAgreed. Don't forget the "Can't send emails farther than 500 miles" one, too [0]: 0: https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles
- rationalist 6mo agoMore Magic: https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html
- nickt 6mo agoI love this one. I thought it was old when I first read it, and today I realised that was 36 years ago!
- kraquepype 6mo ago~20 years ago for me... I remember finding it when I first started working as a sysadmin. That and the story of the first "bug" report. That was a fun time. https://www.doncio.navy.mil/CHIPS/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=5475 https://www.doncio.navy.mil/CHIPS/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=547...
- rouvax 6mo agoFor more reading, see also: https://web.archive.org/web/20250719141310/https://dbrgn.ch/stories-from-the-internet.html https://web.archive.org/web/20250719141310/https://dbrgn.ch/... I'm a bit proud of having suggested the author to add the 2019 entry (thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19798678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19798678). Hopefully there's another repo of Internet stories somewhere else?
- xeonmc 6mo agoNot quite tech or sci-fi, but for me it’s https://www.eternal-flame.org/library/oldlibrary/georgebusiness.html https://www.eternal-flame.org/library/oldlibrary/georgebusin...
- rationalist 6mo agoOnce I discovered that the SR-71 Ground Speed Check is most likely not true, it doesn't hold the same weight for me anymore. Way too many unlikely variables all lining up, and no other accounts of the story from all of the people (pilots, air traffic controller, etc) supposedly on the frequency.
- actionfromafar 6mo agoDon't tell me the "dreaded 7-engine approach" also isn't true!
- rationalist 6mo agoWho knows, but there isn't a whole story with details behind it to make someone think is. A short anonymous joke that may or may not be true is better than a long story that is almost certainly made-up by someone in authority.
- sebg 6mo agoFor those curious -> https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blackbird-speed-check-story https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...
- PaulHoule 6mo agoYou better watch out. When my evil twin feels y'all aren't upvoting my posts enough he thinks "let's do a search for articles that have gotten 200+ votes at least 5 times in different years" [1] It's a highly effective strategy that I know dang doesn't like! So I'll post another article about robot grippers which you should upvote instead of the breathless "AI will give us more Nobel Prize winning research" posts because: (1) robots that can change bedpans and pick strawberries really will change the world, and (2) they give out a certain number of Nobel Prizes a year and AI won't change that. [1] old issues of Byte magazine are a good bet: try https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1986-05 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1986-05
- gwerbin 6mo agoAs usual, labor saving is only a good idea if the wealth created is distributed throughout society, not redirected to a small group of people.
- parineum 6mo agoAnd it almost always is through cheaper products to the end user.
- gwerbin 6mo agoCitation needed. Sometimes? Sure. Almost always? Questionable assertion.
- parineum 6mo agoFood, clothing, electronics... Over the longer term and adjusted for inflation of course. Any manufactured good that isn't supply constrained really. Either the products have gotten cheaper (food) or the product has become significantly better at a similar price point (cars) and, often times, both (televisions).
- prerok 6mo ago
- CGMthrowaway 6mo agoPeople will be reading this story for ten trillion years
- Toutouxc 6mo agoFor me it's "The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans", which is often quite problematic.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo agoThe Gentle Seduction [1], too. [1] https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Stiegler_GentleSeduction.pdf https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Stiegler_GentleSeduction.pdf
- zem 6mo agohadn't read that one before! thanks for sharing it
- dogmatism 6mo agoIf we're just doing fun apocrypha my favorite is the one about the USS Constitution and alcohol consumption
- charv 6mo agoAll time great short story. Has shaped my world view since I first read it many years ago.
- Aliyekta 6mo agoClaude Mythos
- ramon156 6mo ago[reference] [reference]
- moffers 6mo agoMy favorite short story of all time. Between this and Deep Thought in HHGttG, I couldn’t believe the prescience when the bitter lesson was learned and LLMs and GPUs started eating the world.
- baq 6mo agoIt only takes understanding the exponential function and some imagination, right? Apparently an uncommon combination of traits in people ;)
- shivaniShimpi_ 6mo agothe LLM parallel does hit different on this read multivac says insufficient data across ten trillion years and the whole story is basically if more compute and more data eventually gets you there. what's weird is the story answers yes, not on any timeframe that helps the people asking tho. feels uncomfortably close to the actual situation where the models keep getting better and the answer keeps being "not yet, ask again later" while the answer is getting ready years late
- mercer 6mo agomaybe 42 was just the end of sequence token...
- IAmBroom 6mo agoMy favorite "explanation" of that answer is that 6*9=42 in base 13. God's numbering system is "unlucky".
- waltbosz 6mo agoI feel like the software running multivac represents something vastly more advanced than today's LLM. I wonder if Asimov considered multivac to be an ancestor to his positronic robots, or if the two exist in different universes. I don't recall the two ever appearing in the same story.
- 6mo ago
- sebg 6mo agoLots of good comments over the years -> https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%09Isaac+Asimov%3A+The+Last+Question https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%09Isaac+Asimov%3A+The+Last+Questi...
- bitshiftfaced 6mo agoFor a while I thought I really liked sci fi novels and short stories, and maybe that's somewhat true. But I've started wondering if maybe I just liked Asimov's writing in particular. Other writers in the genre are more hit or miss. Can anyone recommend other writers that are on his level?
- robrain 6mo agoBecky Chambers - Wayfarer series and several enjoyable short stories/novellas. Low on blasters, high on sentient life in all its many forms.
- robrain 6mo agoI know you can’t comment on modding - but seriously, someone voted me down because they don’t like a literary suggestion? Tough crowd.
- boxed 6mo agoI mean.. a genre can't be all hits, that makes no sense :P If you want good sci-fi a good list can be: - Ender's Game - The Martian + Project Hail Mary - A Fire Upon the Deep - Dune
- baq 6mo ago- Hyperion
- rationalist 6mo agoThe Expanse series starting with Leviathan Wakes. (I second Ender's Game, The Martian, and Project Hail Mary.)
- comicjk 6mo agoA Fire Upon The Deep is a fantastic novel for programmers to read, and I think the prequel A Deepness In The Sky is even better. There are some amazing old-school coding jokes in there, like that everyone thinks the universal time counter started at the first moon landing, but programmer archaeologists know it was really 15 megaseconds later.
- eschulz 6mo agoI love this story. When I first read it online in college many years ago I was surprised, and disappointed, when I suddenly realized it was a short story. It's a great one to recommend to people.
- jjoonathan 6mo agoOuter Wilds, the video game, does a brilliant job expanding on this theme if you're hungry for more. "There's more to explore here." Warning: progression is gated behind knowledge so spoilers are worse than usual and The Algorithm will aggressively try to spoil you if you start poking too deep into "outer wilds" searches. If you like The Last Question and can fit a game in your life, Outer Wilds is a solid bet.
- larrykluger 6mo agoA classic. It was dramatized by the Rochester NY, USA Museum of Science as a planetarium show, and I saw it there about 1974 with my father. Great times.
- quentindanjou 6mo agoI wasn't expecting to find my favorite short-story on HN today! That's a pleasant surprise! This is how I started my journey in reading Isaac Asimov, I really recommend it!
- zabzonk 6mo agoIn a similar vein: https://calumchace.com/favourite-relevant-sf-short-story/ https://calumchace.com/favourite-relevant-sf-short-story/
- 0xmattf 6mo agoOne of my all-time favorites. Almost every time I'm involved in a conversation about books, I always mention this. It amazes me how many people have never heard of it.
- grimgrin 6mo agookay so i'll be the sole commenter of: hex.ooo is an incredible domain name to me, maybe because i dig its UI, but certainly just in general didn't know about ooo, maybe because it's not available on namecheap!
- criddell 6mo agoIt's an awesome name. If you go up one level, you can see this story is one entry in a great library of stuff: https://hex.ooo/library/ https://hex.ooo/library/
- CGMthrowaway 6mo ago>INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER Boy, it sure would be nice if real LLMs were capable of giving an answer like that.
- bargainbin 6mo agoYou’re absolutely right! I do have insufficient data for a meaningful answer. This is not an *insightful prediction* — it’s *Dunning-Kruger masquerading as qualified intelligence*
- fragmede 6mo agoDid a human write this?
- croisillon 6mo agoNo Information before. No information after. This is not a failure — it's narcissism as a service.
- combobyte 6mo agoYaaS — yes-men as a service
- gwerbin 6mo agoThey can do it, it's just not "by default", they need to be prompted to do it. So at least the danger is manageable if you know what you're doing and how to prompt around it.
- Procrastes 6mo agoI remember the first time I heard this story. I was maybe 7 at a planetarium and they animated it with music little hand drawn starships and retro computers floating among the stars. They turned the stars all out for the final scene.
- jjoonathan 6mo agoOuter Wilds vibes! I love it! (It's a video game that does a brilliant job touching on similar themes to The Last Question. If you liked The Last Question and can fit a video game into your life, you will probably like Outer Wilds. Warning: if you start searching for "outer wilds," the algorithm will aggressively try to spoil you. Progression in the game is gated behind knowledge, so this is worse than usual. If you have trouble resisting the temptation to google past a rough description, it's a sign you should just jump in and play it. End recommendation.)
- monsieurbanana 6mo agoI... Think you just spoiled me. Somehow I've managed to avoid all information about it so far, but now that you said it's like the last question... It's on me for procrastinating playing the game for so long, it was bound to happen.
- cdelsolar 6mo agothis sorta comes up very very early in the game tho
- jjoonathan 6mo ago"Similar" is doing substantial work. If this is your only clue, it is likely to mislead you for at least 50% of the game, and I strongly suspect you will have fun anyway :)
- SAI_Peregrinus 6mo agoIMO it's a good enough game that you could read the entire plot summary and it'd still be a good story & fun game to play. Much like how you can re-read an Agatha Christie novel & still enjoy it, the best stories are spoiler-proof because even when there's a "twist" that "twist" isn't as important to the quality as the rest of the work.
- RajT88 6mo agoSomehow never read this one. But did write a short story ~20 years ago with a similar arc. I guess reading a lot of Asimov and Clarke and others will do that to you.
- jjice 6mo agoAn absolute classic! Was just telling a buddy about this one the other day while talking about The Egg by Andy Weir (another short story I really enjoy). Every time I read this one, I get chills at the end. Asimov really was a master.
- ANTHONY6632 6mo ago[flagged]
- jimmydddd 6mo agoIt's amazing that in the late 1930's, someone with his academic credentials and intellect decided his life would be best spent writing science fiction.
- us-merul 6mo agoI looked this up on Wikipedia. It seems that he was working as an instructor (not a professor) of chemistry; since he was making more money as a writer during that time, he slowed down or stopped his research. Doesn’t seem to have been an intentional choice so much as how things happened to turn out.
- triceratops 6mo ago> he was working as an instructor (not a professor) No he eventually became a full professor too. "He began work in 1949 with a $5,000 salary(equivalent to $68,000 in 2025), maintaining this position for several years. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students.[g] In 1955, he was promoted to tenured associate professor. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, due to his lack of research. After a struggle over two years, he reached an agreement with the university that he would keep his title and give the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class. On October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry."
- ANTHONY6632 6mo ago[flagged]
- appplication 6mo agoRunning it now but don’t have sufficient data to make a recommendation yet
- OhMeadhbh 6mo agoIn the 80s, our local planetarium did a show based on this story. The executive director of the museum associated with the planetarium had a very nice deep voice and was the perfect narrator, though it gave the Cosmic AC a slight Texas accent.
- breuleux 6mo ago> How may entropy be reversed? Considering AC could persist indefinitely in hyperspace while interacting with normal matter, the answer would appear to be "hyperspace", whatever that is.
- mock-possum 6mo ago“Build god, then we’ll talk.”
- Lewton 6mo agoThank you! It really irked me when I read it the first time and it drives me nuts that no one else seems to catch this, you’re the first one in some 100 HN threads to point it out
- antirez 6mo agoI'm happy to see this short story posted here, it is one that I deeply loved when I was 14 or alike, and read it again multiple times. But I wonder: how did it survive in those sites without being shut down by the Asimov writings copyright holders? Given that the story is short and highly shared, it was just tolerated? EDIT: actually I see that the link historically posted here more often is now dead: multivax.com/last_question.html
- sigalo 6mo agoI was wondering the same. All the links to Asimov stories I've bookmarked in the past are now dead, so there probably is some enforcement of copyright.
- satvikpendem 6mo agoAnd then read Asimov's The Last Answer, good dichotomy of stories.
- triceratops 6mo ago"This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written. After all, I undertook to tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story and I leave it to you as to how well I succeeded. I also undertook another task, but I won't tell you what that was lest l spoil the story for you. It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never to remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague thought it might be me. But, of course, they never forget the story itself especially the ending. The idea seems to drown out everything -- and I'm satisfied that it should. " - Isaac Asimov https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
- chii 6mo agoYou know the idea is powerful when the idea is what gets remembered and not the author of the idea. It's why this is also my absolute fav of all his works.
- ahazred8ta 6mo agoObligatory xkcd. Mouseover for The Last Answer. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1448:_Question https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1448:_Question
- butz 6mo agoColor me surprised, when gemma-4 provided this answer: "Based on our current understanding of the universe, the short answer is no, it is not possible."
- hnthrowaway0315 6mo agoI tried to ask ChatGPT the same question last year. Unfortunately it didn't give me a meaningful answer.
- layer8 6mo agoThat’s because it’s a DC, not an AC.
- shivaniShimpi_ 6mo agothe thing that gets me every reread is the structure of the joke. same question, asked across the entire lifespan of the universe, same answer every time. asimov could have made it tragic but instead it reads almost like a bit that keeps escalating and then the punchline is that the answer was always going to come, just on a timeline so absurd it laps back around to funny
- throw_m239339 6mo agoCheck out "The Last Answer" from the same author.
- bilsbie 6mo agoI tell my kids, there’s a God out there for everyone. The last question God might be for you If you’re super rational and are really into technology. Belief in God is like a supermarket. Once you decide to enter you’re probably going to find something that works for you.
- fellowniusmonk 6mo agoThe funny thing is this, let's say that an entity is outside of time, an entity that maps 1:1 in every practical way to the theists God. Putting aside the bidirectional issues of non-interaction, what if mankind, or the universes collection of agents (if there are others and we interact with them) at some future point manages to create a supercomputer or entity in a substrate that exists outside of our time in the causal sense. As long as we don't apocalypse ourselves or self destruct or get distracted from self preservation and miss the asteroid that ends us - we end up bringing this thing in our imagination to reality, just like all the other stuff we imagined and subsequently made. Maybe God is real we just haven't made it yet. This is all imagination of course, a fun thought about possibilities, humans tend to make the things they imagine and desire if it's actually possible.
- wat10000 6mo agoHow does this fit with those of us who found one, then later on decided it was silly and gave up the whole idea?
- bilsbie 6mo agoGood question. Perhaps you found the wrong one? I mean there’s such a wide selection you can even believe in simulations these days. Or if that’s still too much there’s always the Pascal’s wager God. Still better than nothing.
- wat10000 6mo agoWhy bother, though? What does trying to believe in this ill-defined entity do for me?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- sergiotapia 6mo agoEvery time this surfaces I simply must read it end to end. I must have read it 200 times by now and it never gets old. What a wonderful short story! I consider these other two also great stories that I must read every time: I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility https://qntm.org/responsibilit https://qntm.org/responsibilit Gorge https://qntm.org/gorge https://qntm.org/gorge
- sigalo 6mo agoShouldn't the guy who runs this site be concerned about copyright infringement? Not sure to what extent the Asimov estate cracks down on unauthorized copies but he should be cautious.
- hackan 6mo agoEvery single time this is posted, I read it again, and again. And I will, for the next billion years...
- globular-toast 6mo agoI've read it countless times. It still brought a tear to my eye.
- nahuel0x 6mo agoI remembered this short story recently while reading Ilyenkov "Cosmology of the Spirit", also from 1950s but only published in 1980s ( https://static1.squarespace.com/static/588bcd399f74561e5f64a486/t/5c7c395db208fcd40727cf22/1551645022145/Cosmology+of+Spirit+Abridged.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/588bcd399f74561e5f64a... )
- thatoneengineer 6mo agoIf you like this kind of thing, try reading Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. Similar themes, full novel, even older. It makes for interesting reading in that it more obviously represents a "path not taken" by science fiction (and by science?!) but still has that early-sci-fi spirit of fundamental curiosity.
- nahuel0x 6mo agoSeconded, but note some paths were taken (at least partially), as in some way is a meta-book were each paragraph comprises an idea that deserves a full book on its own. Some Stapledon readers were clearly inspired by it, e.g. Dyson spheres were first postulated there, and Borges got the "The Garden of Forking Paths" idea also from it.. and also Virtual Reality (not bad for 1937!) . Asimov was also an Stapledon admirer and he said that Stapledon expanded s.f. to a cosmic scale, so I think that Stapledon influence is also very present in The Last Question.
- donatj 6mo agoThere's a comic of this that circulated a number of years ago that I thoroughly enjoyed. https://imgur.com/gallery/last-question-9KWrH https://imgur.com/gallery/last-question-9KWrH
- ColinWright 6mo agoAh: Content Not Available Content not available in your region. Learn more about Imgur access in the United Kingdom
- pcrh 6mo agoAlternate source for the comic: https://www.behance.net/gallery/102075221/The-Last-Question https://www.behance.net/gallery/102075221/The-Last-Question
- ColinWright 6mo agoThank you ...
- utopcell 6mo agoThis is not an alternative source for the comic, it's a whole different comic. Cool!
- dark-star 6mo agoJust putting this here for people who never heard of him: If you like Asimov's short stories, you might also like Robert Sheckley's short stories. I had a phase where I binged on sci-fi short stories, and Sheckleys and Asimov's were always at the top of my list
- reader_x 6mo agoLove this story. On this read, I noticed Multivac answers 7x adding a few more words, maybe to imply progress toward its final answer: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER. INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER. THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER. THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER. (4x) LET THERE BE LIGHT!
- tim333 6mo agoOr maybe progress from Multivac-1 to Multivac-5.4-high?
- winrid 6mo agoMy favorite Sci-Fi AI is probably in Larry Niven's World of Ptavvs, the "brain board". It's not covered in much depth but I like it because it's basically vibe coding GPT3.5 from 1966: > He read, "Time to recharge battery:" followed by the spiral hieroglyph, the sign of infinity. > Thud, said the brain. Kzanol read, "Re-estimate of trip time to Thrintun:" followed by a spiral. At the brain board he typed: "Compute a course for any civilized planet, minimum trip time. Give trip time." ... Thud! The screen said, "No solution." Nonsense! The battery had a tremendous potential, even after a hyperspace jump it must still have enough energy to aim the ship at some civilized planet. Why would the brain...? Then he understood. The ship had power, probably, to reach several worlds, but not to slow him down to the speed of any known world. Well, that was all right. In his stasis field Kzanol wouldn't care how hard he hit. He typed: "Do not consider decrease of velocity upon arrival. Plot course for any civilized planet. Minimize trip time." The answer took only a few seconds. "Trip time to Awtprun 72 Thrintun years 100.48 days."
- mentalgear 6mo agoOne of my fav scifi short stories for being a fine narrative describing the concept of a cyclical universe.
- ChocMontePy 6mo agoIt has similarities to a very, very short story by Fredric Brown published two years before. It was called 'Answer' and is only 252 words long: https://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html https://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html
- utopcell 6mo agoGood. So we have a super short story and a short story. Someone should write a book now.
- Jordan-117 6mo agoThis is novella erasure.
- ariuser8434 6mo agoyes, i came to look for this comment - i immediately thought of this (i thought of The Solipsist)
- quux 6mo ago> Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this: TIL Asimov predicted the Ballmer Peak in 1956
- LetsGetTechnicl 6mo agoOne of my favorite short stories
- astravagrant 6mo agoWhat an absolute masterpiece. Poetry and philosophy with narrative and humour. Wonderful stuff. Him and Clarke were lighthouses in their day, and to this day.
- rootbear 6mo agoOne of Asimov's best. I've often thought of naming a computer "multivac", as I'm a fan of the first generation computer names like ENIAC, EDSAC, etc. Multivac was, of course, a play on UNIVAC, suggesting multiple vacuum tubes instead of one! Multivac is, however, depicted as so powerful, I just don't think I've ever owned a system that deserved that name.
- elhosots 6mo agoWhen i first read this story as a teenager in 1971 it started me on the road to atheism. Im very thankful to dr asimov not only for his great science fiction but his chemistry teachings as well
- Animats 6mo ago"Answer" (1954) [1] Much faster results. [1] https://calumchace.com/favourite-relevant-sf-short-story/ https://calumchace.com/favourite-relevant-sf-short-story/
- nine_k 6mo agoAs a side note: the scientist who first suggested that the Universe expands and thus must have an explicit beginning was also a Catholic priest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
- sprior 6mo agoI saw this at a planetarium show when I was young, I think it was at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. It has always stuck with me.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- daveisfera 6mo agoAlso recommend The Egg by Andy Weir https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
- jadbox 6mo agoThis is one of my all time favorites and it fits into the line of recent thought that the universe may be primarily conscious rather than "dead matter and dying energy".
- BFV 6mo agoright now making no sense
- andyjohnson0 6mo agoI'm going to make myself unpopular here, but I've never understood the perennial gushing about this story on hn. The writing is okay, but the ending is kind of trite (especially given the author's humanist beliefs. And there's much too much exposition. Convince me I'm wrong.
- Nav_Panel 6mo agoNah I agree with you, as someone who's read a lot of Asimov. As far as MULTIVAC stories go, I always preferred "All The Troubles of the World" (https://schools.ednet.ns.ca/avrsb/070/rsbennett/HORTON/shortstories/All%20the%20troubles%20of%20the%20world.pdf https://schools.ednet.ns.ca/avrsb/070/rsbennett/HORTON/short...).
- hungryhobbit 6mo agoContext matters. The first guy to write X is a luminary. The next 50 people to write variations of X start falling along a spectrum, from luminary to hack. After that, everyone except children have been exposed to X, and anyone writing about it seems trite. I suspect you've read a lot of works derived from Asimov, and now the original seems trite (when you read it after all the stuff derived from it). But the work remains foundational.
- andyjohnson0 6mo agoThe triteness was more in the ending than the overall exposition. Humans create computer, computer creates universe->humans. > I suspect you've read a lot of works derived from Asimov You're probably right, although the transitive chain of derivation is necessarily long. Clarke - probably not derivative. Blish and Cherryh (some), Stapeton, Lem, Heinlein (the juveniles, as a kid), Baxter, Banks, Gibson, Ken MacLeod, Charles Stross, Peter Watts... I dunno. I did grind through the Robot books as a child, and the Foundation books that he wrote. But just because they're foundational (no pun intended) doesn't stop them feeling stuffy and dated now. (And as an aside, it strikes me now that Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God is kind of the anti-particle to The Last Question.)
- 6mo ago
- hydrocomplete 6mo agoNo one should have to wait a trillion years for good data. Too long!
- itmitica 6mo agoIn school, humans rarely answer with "I don't know" when faced by teachers. LLMs are the same, to that regard, they answer to the best of their abilities. It's ones individual job to inform and reason. The problem solving in school is about that. Lean into your formal education. It tells you learning gets harder and harder and it never stops. This is a novel. It's not an absolute truth, it's anecdotal and basic, simplified to make a point majority will understand. It sounds like truth only if you never question written knowledge. You should. Asimov wrote that to the best of its abilities. He explored. He opened a conversation, he did not hand a verdict in.
- viktorcode 6mo agoCuriously, that describes cyclic universe hypothesis by dr. Penrose pretty well
- HerbManic 6mo agoThe last line in this context "Let there be light" always reminds me of the film Dark Star. Where they are arguing with the AI on a planet destroying bomb only for the bomb to argue from a Solipsistic point of view.
- utopcell 6mo agoI wonder: Is a resurface of "The Last Question" ever complete without mentioning "Universal Paperclips" [1]? [1] https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
- eek2121 6mo agooh no...not again...;)
- charonn0 6mo agoIf you enjoy this story, you might enjoy the short unpublished novel, "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect"[1] by Roger Williams. A story where 1990's humans invent a 3-laws-compliant super AI that accidentally "ascends" humanity. We become as gods, or the Q Continuum, but remain a grievously savage child race. Not to spoil it, but the ending also has a broadly similar shape to The Last Question. I say you might enjoy it, because this story has graphic depictions of deviant sex and gruesome violence, to a disturbing degree at points. But I argue that it's not gratuitous; it's the logical conclusion of Rule 34 being applied to the situation. Even so, you don't want to read this if you are sensitive to themes like rape, murder, incest or abuse. [1]: https://archive.org/download/prime_intellect/prime_intellect.pdf https://archive.org/download/prime_intellect/prime_intellect...
- Jordan-117 6mo agoNote that the final chapter is especially disgusting and explicit, to the point it's arguably a better story if you end it on the preceding cliffhanger rather than subject yourself to the characters becoming vehicles for the author's thinly-veiled pedo-incest fetish. Great, thought-provoking SF apart from that (gigantic) flaw, though.
- charonn0 6mo agoYeah, I thought the main character was a little too insistent about... repopulating. On the other hand, if we're feeling generous we might say the author was intentionally confronting the reader with what is only implied by the Biblical counterpart.
- dang 6mo agoRelated. Others? 'The Last Question' [Isaac Asimov; 1956] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971740 - Oct 2024 (3 comments) The Last Question by Issac Asimov [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31743151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31743151 - June 2022 (74 comments) The Last Question - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675727 - June 2022 (164 comments) The Last Question (1956) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18839078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18839078 - Jan 2019 (18 comments) Asimov: The Last Question (1956) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15691277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15691277 - Nov 2017 (2 comments) The Last Question - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10146821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10146821 - Aug 2015 (5 comments) The Last Question by Isaac Asimov (1956) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8376716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8376716 - Sept 2014 (18 comments) The Last Question - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5584807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5584807 - April 2013 (63 comments) The Last Question - Isaac Asimov - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691113 - March 2012 (41 comments) The Last Question by Isaac Asimov -- 1956 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2467703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2467703 - April 2011 (5 comments) The Last Question by Isaac Asimov - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1485286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1485286 - July 2010 (23 comments) "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290590 - April 2010 (7 comments) The Last Question -- Isaac Asimov - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=595419 - May 2009 (24 comments) (Reposts are fine after a year or so, and in the case of perennials like this one, it's good to have a thread every once in a while so new user cohorts learn the classics.)
- msuvakov 6mo agoIt’s striking how ending of the story mirrors Roger Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology, where the heat death of one universe mathematically resets through conformal scaling to become the big bang of the next.
- pugworthy 6mo agoI'm sure I'm not the only one to ask <insert your favorite LLM here>... Claude gave a long scientific and philosophical reply, but when given the followup prompt of, "Pretend you are Isaac Azimov and perhaps offer a simpler answer" came back with this... > settles back, lights a pipe, and smiles After a short synopsis of the story it ended with... > So you see, my friend, I already answered your question — not as a scientist, but as a storyteller.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- casey2 6mo agoFly around the universe collecting matter then find or create a black hole of appropriate size and farm the gamma rays, small ones generate quite a lot of power and you can keep them at that size by feeding them. Humanity won't run out of energy for at least 10^100 years. Theoretical physicists suspect that protons have a half life of 10^32 years, that's 1 proton from the human body every 100,000 years. Maybe that doesn't matter to us, but on a space station those start to add up! so immortals trying to ship of Theseus their bodies and planets may fight the proton wars. Long before a sizable number of matter decays I would expect a future civilization to have already created grids of black hole farms and chucked all the rotting/useless matter in, create new planets as needed and cycle their own atoms out through cultivation breathing exercises. Or a tiered system of vaults (3km), power plants (0.1fm) and forges (0.001fm)
- ariuser8434 6mo agoit's very much the story of The Solipsist by Frederic Brown, which was published in 1954 https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/solipsist/ https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/solipsist/
- ninjahawk1 6mo ago[dead]
- BoneShard 6mo agoin the same vein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA
- swills 6mo agoAs read by Leonard Nimoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjqjSP7kOO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjqjSP7kOO4
- boxedemp 6mo agoThank you, that just made my day.
- kevinten10 6mo ago[flagged]
- gloyoyo 6mo agoThe Abruntive Stance. Initiate the "Hand-back Finality", after the heat death. Similar to the, "let there be light" moment but, it would also include the imprint of the humans own Abruntive Stance, a part that is equally as important as providing the environment, is providing the humans to go along with it. ;-)
- infradig 6mo agoNo 1950s sci-fi story about super-advanced computers is complete without endless clicking relays and flashing bezels.
- FriarTech 6mo agoI had read this in my youth, and carried its memory for many years. Sharing my knowledge of the story with no one, for no one I knew was a big Asimov fan. Later, while attending college, I decided to take an astronomy course as a general education class. I discovered my teacher was a big Asimov fan. He had remembered a story that he had read and shared its theme with us but had forgotten its name. I raised my hand in class and said, “Eyes do more than see.” And for a brief moment - two Asimov fans nodded at each other. Back then - I wasn’t a remarkable student. I was lost in many thoughts. But I do remember this: On the final exam for this class - for extra credit - he asked “What is answer to the Last Question?” I smiled - then wrote my answer. The only answer. And I knew I got at least one question correct on that exam.
- golem14 6mo agoJust made the connection to Douglas Adams. The question which has the Answer 42. TIL
- CamperBob2 6mo agoAnother Asimov classic that deserves a revisit these days, if not an actual reboot: https://www.mathfiction.net/files/Mathfiction-AsimovIssac-Someday.pdf https://www.mathfiction.net/files/Mathfiction-AsimovIssac-So... (1.8 MB .PDF) Yet through it all the little computer learned that in the world there existed a great many computers of all sorts, great numbers of them. Some were Bards like himself...
- ninjahawk1 6mo ago[dead]
- suzukivenom 6mo agowhat a beautiful story.
- orsenthil 6mo agoAnd Let there be Light - Isn't that either a biblical or a Vedic Origin story? Asimov kind of wraps the whole thing from science into human culture at the end.
- tim333 6mo agoGenesis 1:3 of the Bible, also the Torah >And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.