31–40 of 69 posts
What 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.
Does anyone know what happened to multivax.com?
What 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.
Well worth reading for the (unexpected) outcome, and the story has an underlying theory that has been discussed on HN before (you will find out which theory that is by reading the story, I don't want to spoil it). Also interesting is that Asimov starts out with the concept of a huge supercomputer, named MULTIVAC (which is not unexpected given that it was written in the 50's), but in the story the 'AC' gradually evolv…
I was inordinately tickled to discover that Wolfram|Alpha's database includes this question as an easter egg.
Well worth reading for the (unexpected) outcome, and the story has an underlying theory that has been discussed on HN before (you will find out which theory that is by reading the story, I don't want to spoil it). Also interesting is that Asimov starts out with the concept of a huge supercomputer, named MULTIVAC (which is not unexpected given that it was written in the 50's), but in the story the 'AC' gradually evolv…
What underlying theory do you have in mind? It seems like Nietzsche's eternal recurrence to me.
Spoilers ahead...
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You have been warned...
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The story moves towards a technological singularity [1]. This is a term Asimov could have been familar with at the time of writing. The name MULTIVAC is obviously inspired by the ENIAC and UNIVAC. So it's safe to assume Asimov was aware of the writings of Von Neumann.
The unintended consequence of creating this artificial intelligence is creation as described in Genesis.
I interpret the underlying message of this story to be 'our reality is a simulated reality [2]' since it was created by AI. I don't know if Asimov would have agreed.
What 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.
The ending was a powerful metaphor of what it may mean to know all and how such an all knowing entity may act when there is no one else around to share this existence.
This story isn't about religion wherein the origin of life and all that exists is explained on the basis of faith. This is a story on how such an origin can take place in a setting of speculative fiction that doesn't push faith at all. I feel sorry for you that you couldn't enjoy the ending or understand Asimov for that matter.
Silence must fall when the last question is asked.
As much as I love "The Last Question," My favorite Asimov short story is "Profession" (I read it in the same story anthology as "The Last Question): http://www.abelard.org/asimov.php Described on that site as "an allegorical description of the manner in which education currently functions in our primitive western societies," I found it (as a child/early teen especially) to be one of his more engaging and relevant wor…
In the end, the question is which kind of engineer do I really want to be? And my answer is that the world has enough Amand Trevelyans. I want to be George Platen.