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The Last Question

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Re: The Last Question

#51

Post by windowshopping »

jjice wrote: post #4
pfarrell wrote: post #2

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.

Damn it, I wish I read this comment before I read the summary. I had chills at the end. Maybe I should read some Asimov...

Nah, 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.

Re: The Last Question

#53

Post by Thom2503 »

gpvos wrote: post #50
mcphage wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deus ex Machina has been a literary hack since the ancient Greeks coined the phrase :-)

Just to be clear: it's Latin.

Yes, but the Greeks coined the actual phrase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina#Origin_of_the_...

"Deus ex machina is a Latin calque from Greek ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanês theós) 'god from the machine'. The term was coined from the conventions of ancient Greek theater, where actors who were playing gods were brought onto stage using a machine."

Re: The Last Question

#54

Post by arwhatever »

paraph1n wrote: post #27

A similarly thought-provoking short story, perhaps my favorite, is The Egg[1] by Andy Weir. [1]: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Egg_(Weir_short_story)

Ha! This whole thread made me recall that story, but I couldn’t recall the title, and figured I’d never find it by the synopsis alone which I remembered. But here you’ve posted it - thanks

Re: The Last Question

#56

Post by gpvos »

codechicago277 wrote: post #28
jjice wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn it, I wish I read this comment before I read the summary. I had chills at the end. Maybe I should read some Asimov...

See also “The last answer” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Answer Full text: https://highexistence.com/the-last-answer-short-story/ These 2 are my favorite Asimov stories.

Thanks. I had read The Last Question already, but am among today's 10_000 for this story.

Re: The Last Question

#57

Post by TuringTest »

Thorrez wrote: post #48
burrows wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, God and his talking dirt.

The point isn't about the dirt's abilities. The point is how did the dirt come to be in the first place (or really, the atoms, subatomic particles, and mass itself)?

Yeah but the missing point in the reasoning leading to that joke (and theological arguments) is, who created God? If you make the argument that a deity is its own creator and cause, that idea could be applied to the existing physical universe directly.

Re: The Last Question

#58

Post by 7373737373 »

This feels relevant: Roger Penrose - Why Did Our Universe Begin? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypjZF6Pdrws

tl;dw: It is well known that the universe expands, tracing this back in time leads to the singularity called the Big Bang. But is it possible to ask for a "before" the beginning of time? What is time? Time is what we measure with clocks. What are clocks? Something that returns to the same state (say, a pendulum, or the earth orbiting around the sun - a "year"). To be able to build a clock you need mass. Only objects with mass, moving below the speed of light, experience time. In the very far future, after all stars have burned out, the only objects remaining will be black holes. Eventually, even they will decay due to Hawking radiation. So in the end, there will be only expanding space, and radiation that "travels to infinity". Photons themselves do not experience time as they move with the speed of light. Without mass, without anything that has a notion of time, the concept of distance becomes meaningless. The universe will become spacelike. Without distances, the universe may as well be a singular point. Like the Big Bang :)

Re: The Last Question

#59

Post by flir »

jjice wrote: post #4
pfarrell wrote: post #2

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.

Damn it, I wish I read this comment before I read the summary. I had chills at the end. Maybe I should read some Asimov...

You probably won't get chills from anything else he wrote (except, maybe, Nightfall). But you should dip your toe in with some short stories.

Re: The Last Question

#60

Post by nonrandomstring »

The deification of computers seems woven in to culture in invisible ways now. Along with it comes centralisation and ultimately a fusion into a singularity.

There are people, who deep in their hearts don't want individual tools to expand and improve themselves, but something new to kneel down and pray to.

I place this struggle squarely on the humanist anti-humanist axis.

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