alt Hacker NewsIsaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
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I tried to ask ChatGPT the same question last year. Unfortunately it didn't give me a meaningful answer.
I'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.
All time great short story. Has shaped my world view since I first read it many years ago.
Every 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
Gorge
Shouldn'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.
No one should have to wait a trillion years for good data. Too long!
One of my favorite short stories
Just 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
Fly 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)
Check out "The Last Answer" from the same author.
Related. Others?
'The Last Question' [Isaac Asimov; 1956] - 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 - June 2022 (74 comments)
The Last Question - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675727 - June 2022 (164 comments)
The Last Question (1956) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18839078 - Jan 2019 (18 comments)
Asimov: The Last Question (1956) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15691277 - Nov 2017 (2 comments)
The Last Question - 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 - Sept 2014 (18 comments)
The Last Question - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5584807 - April 2013 (63 comments)
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov - 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 - April 2011 (5 comments)
The Last Question by Isaac Asimov - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1485286 - July 2010 (23 comments)
"The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290590 - April 2010 (7 comments)
The Last Question -- Isaac Asimov - 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.)
I've read it countless times. It still brought a tear to my eye.
I 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.
Color 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."
Another Asimov classic that deserves a revisit these days, if not an actual reboot: 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...right now making no sense
I like the concept, has anyone tried this in production?
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Curiously, that describes cyclic universe hypothesis by dr. Penrose pretty well