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Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

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Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#291

Post by golem14 »

FriarTech wrote: post #281

I had read this in my youth, and carried its memory for many years. Sharing my knowledge of the story with no one, for no one I knew was a big Asimov fan. Later, while attending college, I decided to take an astronomy course as a general education class. I discovered my teacher was a big Asimov fan. He had remembered a story that he had read and shared its theme with us but had forgotten its name. I raised my hand in…

Just made the connection to Douglas Adams. The question which has the Answer 42.

TIL

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#293

Post by zem »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #147
jasongill wrote: post #2

This is one of those stories, just like the SR-71 "ground speed check" story, that every single time I see it posted I just have to read the entire thing again. I love it.

The Gentle Seduction [1], too. [1] https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Stiegler_GentleSeduction.pdf

hadn't read that one before! thanks for sharing it

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#294

Post by zem »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #196
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #194

I'm going to make myself unpopular here, but I've never understood the perennial gushing about this story on hn. The writing is okay, but the ending is kind of trite (especially given the author's humanist beliefs. And there's much too much exposition. Convince me I'm wrong.

Context matters. The first guy to write X is a luminary. The next 50 people to write variations of X start falling along a spectrum, from luminary to hack. After that, everyone except children have been exposed to X, and anyone writing about it seems trite. I suspect you've read a lot of works derived from Asimov, and now the original seems trite (when you read it after all the stuff derived from it). But the work re…

this story has arguably aged worse in that respect than asimov's similarly titled "the last answer". that one still evokes a "whoa" when I think about it.

https://www.highexistence.com/the-last-answer-short-story/

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#295

Post by zem »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #213
hungryhobbit wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context matters. The first guy to write X is a luminary. The next 50 people to write variations of X start falling along a spectrum, from luminary to hack. After that, everyone except children have been exposed to X, and anyone writing about it seems trite. I suspect you've read a lot of works derived from Asimov, and now the original seems trite (when you read it after all the stuff derived from it). But the work re…

The triteness was more in the ending than the overall exposition. Humans create computer, computer creates universe->humans. > I suspect you've read a lot of works derived from Asimov You're probably right, although the transitive chain of derivation is necessarily long. Clarke - probably not derivative. Blish and Cherryh (some), Stapeton, Lem, Heinlein (the juveniles, as a kid), Baxter, Banks, Gibson, Ken MacLeod, C…

the penultimate line of "the nine billion names of god" has always stayed with me: "there is always a last time for everything". sounds a bit trite just by itself, but it was an incredibly powerful line when I encountered it in the story and that feeling has stayed attached to it for me.

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#296

Post by ahazred8ta »

triceratops wrote: post #81

"This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written. After all, I undertook to tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story and I leave it to you as to how well I succeeded. I also undertook another task, but I won't tell you what that was lest l spoil the story for you. It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never to rememb…

Obligatory xkcd. Mouseover for The Last Answer. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1448:_Question

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#297

Post by redsocksfan45 »

krapp wrote: post #121
BeetleB wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much in many of Heinlein's either. Or in Star Wars.

Or even Star Trek to be honest. I don't know why Star Wars always gets passed off as "science fantasy" when it's a more grounded universe than Trek by far - space wizards notwithstanding (which Trek has plenty of.) Even in a lot of hard SF, a lot of the science is wonky if it falls outside of the author's special interest or area of expertise. Relevant to Asimov, the only reason robots have "positronic" brains in his…

[dead]

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#298

Post by andyjohnson0 »

zem wrote: post #294
hungryhobbit wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context matters. The first guy to write X is a luminary. The next 50 people to write variations of X start falling along a spectrum, from luminary to hack. After that, everyone except children have been exposed to X, and anyone writing about it seems trite. I suspect you've read a lot of works derived from Asimov, and now the original seems trite (when you read it after all the stuff derived from it). But the work re…

this story has arguably aged worse in that respect than asimov's similarly titled "the last answer". that one still evokes a "whoa" when I think about it. https://www.highexistence.com/the-last-answer-short-story/

Thank you - I hadn't read that before. Its a much richer, and also darker, work than The Last Question.

Also it was written in 1980,.almost three decades after The Last Question. I wonder if part of the difference (to me) is in the evolution of the author's writing practice, or development of themes in SF over that time?

Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)

#299

Post by TuringTest »

wat10000 wrote: post #228
TuringTest wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Pascal's wager is of the same nature as Aquinas' Five Ways to prove God, or accelerationists about the inevitability of a Singularity: believing that your own rational argument can be the basis to prove a fact about reality merely because it feels internally consistent. Needless to say, I don’t find them at all convincing. This 'nothing' is much better than catching unconvincing unneeded supernatural entities.

The Wager doesn't attempt to prove God, it merely states that you might as well worship, because the cost is small and the potential payoff is huge. It falls apart because, based on what's actually known, there's no reason to think worshipping might be the thing that condemns you to hell, and not doing so gets you into heaven, rather than the other way around.

Yes, my point is that those three arguments may be compelling but they assume that reality is correlated to the shape of their thoughts. What they have in common is that they all miss the insight that you need to actually test your assumptions to improve your certainties, and that's not feasible for theoretical all powerful entities that can bend reality.
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