The Last Question

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Last Question is a short story by science fiction author 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). It is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralisation 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 the best science fiction yet written. "The Last Question" ranks with the other stories and "Nightfall" as one of Asimov's best-known and most acclaimed short stories. 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 Issac Asimov wrote in his autobiography. The Abrams Planetarium show is voiced by Leonard Nimoy.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

This particular 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 second law of thermodynamics be reversed?" In each case the computer finds itself unable to reply due to "insufficient data for a meaningful answer".

In the last scenes, the god-like descendants of humanity watch the universe finally approach the state of heat death and ask the Cosmic AC, Multivac's descendant, the question one last time. Cosmic AC is still unable to answer, but continues to ponder the question; it exists in a hyperspace outside of normal space and time. Eventually the Cosmic AC discovers the answer, but has nobody to report it to; the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to implement the answer and reverse entropy, creating the universe anew; the story ends with AC's pronouncement, "'LET THERE BE LIGHT!' And there was light—"