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The Last Question · 1956
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What it means
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A computer's shrug becomes the hinge of a whole story: the question stays unanswerable for ages, so the reply works as a refrain that builds suspense rather than a dead end. The payoff in the closing lines is one of science fiction's most famous endings. Asimov called it his favourite of his own stories, and the phrase survives as a wry reply to any question that sounds big and has no data behind it.
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In context
Spoilers for The Last QuestionShow the scene
"The Last Question" first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was later collected in Nine Tomorrows (1959). In 2061, the technicians Adell and Lupov celebrate how Multivac now harnesses solar energy, then talk about the sun eventually dying under the second law of thermodynamics. Adell asks whether entropy can be reversed, and the computer gives this reply. The question is put to its successors across the ages, and each answers the same way until the universe itself is dead.
Sources (1)
- Wikipedia: The Last QuestionIntroduction and Plot summaryReference checked
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