Asimov’s Favorite Story: “The Last Question”
Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question” is not about robots, but it was admittedly his favorite story.
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 give 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.
-Isaac Asimov, 1973
“The Last Question” is a story of a computer with exceptional intelligence, the Multivac, presented with a recurring question through many stages of history, “Can entropy ever be reversed?”
Without spoiling the story, “The Last Question” is a wonderful glimpse into the technological singularity towards which we are accelerating.
Robotic Revolutions firmly believes the singularity is near. Perhaps nearer than most of us realize.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:21 am
This is just a crappy shaggy dog story.
May 24th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I had to look up shaggy dog story to understand your comment. While there may be some elements of a shaggy dog story in “The Last Question,” such as the fact that Asimov repeats the question, I don’t think it is a fair comparison. And in any case, even if it is a shaggy dog story, I would say it is the best shaggy dog story ever, rather than crappy.
May 24th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
I concur with Buff. This story sucks. I’ve read many of Asimov’s novels before I knew what great authors were, and looking back on them every single one was crap. Asimov earns 0 out of 5 for charactization, 1 out of 5 for ideas, and only a 3 (at best) out of 5 for his plots (this story gets a 1). In other words, *sometimes* he rises to mediocrity but usually he is execrable.
May 29th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Richard you are a twat
May 29th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Wow, guys….
Just wow.