And now I know where Charles Stross did find inspiration for Accelerando.
Great story.
The Last Question
21–30 of 69 posts
Re: The Last Question
#22And now I know where Charles Stross did find inspiration for Accelerando.
Great story.
Re: The Last Question
#23Odd that this is Asimov's favorite - it seems so inferior to Nightfall, or The Dead Past, or probably some others that I am forgetting.
C'mon, it's like the best plot twist ever, and Asimov prided himself on plot twists.
Re: The Last Question
#24The story boils down to:
1. Is the second law of thermodynamic wrong? 2. Does P equals NP (or, if 1 is true, then how and how long will it take to solve it?) 3. What's God?
Re: The Last Question
#25What a waste of time that was! I felt greatly cheated by the ending. It was exactly as if I had met a friendly, neatly dressed, smiling person on the street who, after 5 minutes, turned out to be peddling his religion after all.
Honestly, I have thought of much better stories myself. I remember GREATLY enjoying Asimov as a teenager, and I am pretty sure this is not his best story.
Re: The Last Question
#26The story boils down to: 1. Is the second law of thermodynamic wrong? 2. Does P equals NP (or, if 1 is true, then how and how long will it take to solve it?) 3. What's God?
Oh goodness, this hilarious.
Someone posting a link to a short story by one of the greatest SF writers all of time, whose writings spawned entire threads of reflexion and discussion in many disciplines; and a HN comment being a dismissive tl;dr.
Re: The Last Question
#27What a waste of time that was! I felt greatly cheated by the ending. It was exactly as if I had met a friendly, neatly dressed, smiling person on the street who, after 5 minutes, turned out to be peddling his religion after all. Honestly, I have thought of much better stories myself. I remember GREATLY enjoying Asimov as a teenager, and I am pretty sure this is not his best story.
You have _thought_ of better stories yourself, but have you ever _written_ a better story. I'm pretty incredulous of anyone who claims to write better than Isaac Asimov. Strikes me the same way people who never built anything go around ripping on other people's products. Truly classic internet delusions of grandeur.
Re: The Last Question
#28The story boils down to: 1. Is the second law of thermodynamic wrong? 2. Does P equals NP (or, if 1 is true, then how and how long will it take to solve it?) 3. What's God?
Oh goodness, this hilarious. Someone posting a link to a short story by one of the greatest SF writers all of time, whose writings spawned entire threads of reflexion and discussion in many disciplines; and a HN comment being a dismissive tl;dr.
I didn't find the comment to be dismissive actually. What's wrong with writing a story that explores the boundaries of science and god? That must have been a pretty natural thing for someone living in Asimov's era to do.
Re: The Last Question
#29The story boils down to: 1. Is the second law of thermodynamic wrong? 2. Does P equals NP (or, if 1 is true, then how and how long will it take to solve it?) 3. What's God?
Oh goodness, this hilarious. Someone posting a link to a short story by one of the greatest SF writers all of time, whose writings spawned entire threads of reflexion and discussion in many disciplines; and a HN comment being a dismissive tl;dr.
De gustibus non est disputandum, as they say. I don't care for this story either, it's less of an actual story, and more of a "what if" that feels somehow a bit corny to me.
Re: The Last Question
#30What a waste of time that was! I felt greatly cheated by the ending. It was exactly as if I had met a friendly, neatly dressed, smiling person on the street who, after 5 minutes, turned out to be peddling his religion after all. Honestly, I have thought of much better stories myself. I remember GREATLY enjoying Asimov as a teenager, and I am pretty sure this is not his best story.
It doesn't necessarily need to be a religion.
It's clear that something like what we call The Big Bang happened. But we can only trace back time and space to the origin. What happened "before" the origin is probably unknowable to us on this side of the origin. The best we can do is speculate, in scientific or literary terms.
So think of this as speculative fiction, expressed in terms of the author's time.
Personally I thought the progression of man through the ages was the most interesting part of the story.