I remember the first time I heard this story. I was maybe 7 at a planetarium and they animated it with music little hand drawn starships and retro computers floating among the stars. They turned the stars all out for the final scene.
(It's a video game that does a brilliant job touching on similar themes to The Last Question. If you liked The Last Question and can fit a video game into your life, you will probably like Outer Wilds. Warning: if you start searching for "outer wilds," the algorithm will aggressively try to spoil you. Progression in the game is gated behind knowledge, so this is worse than usual. If you have trouble resisting the temptation to google past a rough description, it's a sign you should just jump in and play it. End recommendation.)
Great game, but if you get stuck for a long time, just look up some spoilers. Multiple times I abandoned the "right" approach to a problem because I couldn't get it to work and wasted countless hours trying to solve it the wrong way - only to find out I should have stuck to the right approach.
The game doesn't give any guidance, and wasting those hours is not rewarded.
The only other tip I'll give:
When you first play the game, spend the first 1-2 hours on your little planet learning everything (how to maneuver, how to use the signalscope, etc). Once you leave the planet, a timer will start. There is no way to "save" the game. You will die when the timer runs out. Don't panic. That's expected. Don't try to figure out what you did wrong to die - you will die no matter what. The game will restart, but anything you learned in the past will be in your computer's memory for retrieval.
OK, 2 more tips (one I wish someone had told me - I finished the game without it):
1. You can make time go by if you sleep at the fire.
2. There is a way to "meditate" until you die. This is very useful when you get stuck and can't get out of somewhere. To find out how to meditate, talk to the people on other planets (you may have to talk more than once before he teaches you).
What did I spoil? That you keep dying? They'll encounter that very early in the game. And if you look around, you'll see that quite a few quit the game because they didn't understand that dying is normal.
The lack of knowledge about the other two items I mentioned are also reasons people stopped playing the game. If you don't know them, the game becomes an incredible drag. Even I would have quit if I didn't know about meditation.
You revealed the central conceit of the game. In my opinion, discovering that is an important part of the experience of playing the game, even if it's very early, and even though I did find it initially frustrating. The Steam page doesn't reveal that, and they have an incentive to make the Steam page fairly revealing in order to sell you on the game.
I'm literally one of those people who almost gave up on the game because I didn't understand that dying is normal.
The fact that the game would start all over each time made me think I hadn't progressed enough to save the game. And because the first time round, the timer doesn't really begin until you leave space, I thought I would have to do all the training (jetpack, etc) each time. I remember being very frustrated - I had spent well over an hour playing it and it didn't even save the game?
And felt the same thing the second time round.
Then I abandoned the game for about a year. The only reason I returned to it was because I couldn't understand why so many would like such a game. So I finally searched online on how to save the game and ... oh, that's why.
As I said, look on various forums, and you'll see plenty of people quitting the game early because they didn't understand this. There's a whole thread on the subreddit on frustrations of players who recommended the game to friends - a significant percentage quit the game before they got to any of the interesting parts.
I think revealing this is a decent compromise to ensure people will actually play the game.
I haven't played the game, was interested in it (I've heard of it before, just haven't gotten around to playing it yet), and I was a bit bummed to read about this unusual game mechanic without discovering for myself.
"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 remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague thought it might be me. But, of course, they never forget the story itself especially the ending. The idea seems to drown out everything -- and I'm satisfied that it should.
" - Isaac Asimov
An absolute classic! Was just telling a buddy about this one the other day while talking about The Egg by Andy Weir (another short story I really enjoy). Every time I read this one, I get chills at the end. Asimov really was a master.
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.
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 class and said, “Eyes do more than see.”
And for a brief moment - two Asimov fans nodded at each other.
Back then - I wasn’t a remarkable student. I was lost in many thoughts.
But I do remember this:
On the final exam for this class - for extra credit - he asked “What is answer to the Last Question?”
I smiled - then wrote my answer. The only answer. And I knew I got at least one question correct on that exam.
If you like this kind of thing, try reading Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. Similar themes, full novel, even older. It makes for interesting reading in that it more obviously represents a "path not taken" by science fiction (and by science?!) but still has that early-sci-fi spirit of fundamental curiosity.
If you enjoy this story, you might enjoy the short unpublished novel, "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect"[1] by Roger Williams. A story where 1990's humans invent a 3-laws-compliant super AI that accidentally "ascends" humanity. We become as gods, or the Q Continuum, but remain a grievously savage child race. Not to spoil it, but the ending also has a broadly similar shape to The Last Question.
I say you might enjoy it, because this story has graphic depictions of deviant sex and gruesome violence, to a disturbing degree at points. But I argue that it's not gratuitous; it's the logical conclusion of Rule 34 being applied to the situation. Even so, you don't want to read this if you are sensitive to themes like rape, murder, incest or abuse.
For a while I thought I really liked sci fi novels and short stories, and maybe that's somewhat true. But I've started wondering if maybe I just liked Asimov's writing in particular. Other writers in the genre are more hit or miss. Can anyone recommend other writers that are on his level?
Considering AC could persist indefinitely in hyperspace while interacting with normal matter, the answer would appear to be "hyperspace", whatever that is.
I wasn't expecting to find my favorite short-story on HN today! That's a pleasant surprise! This is how I started my journey in reading Isaac Asimov, I really recommend it!
A classic. It was dramatized by the Rochester NY, USA Museum of Science as a planetarium show, and I saw it there about 1974 with my father. Great times.
Fly around the universe collecting matter then find or create a black hole of appropriate size and farm the gamma rays, small ones generate quite a lot of power and you can keep them at that size by feeding them. Humanity won't run out of energy for at least 10^100 years. Theoretical physicists suspect that protons have a half life of 10^32 years, that's 1 proton from the human body every 100,000 years. Maybe that doesn't matter to us, but on a space station those start to add up! so immortals trying to ship of Theseus their bodies and planets may fight the proton wars. Long before a sizable number of matter decays I would expect a future civilization to have already created grids of black hole farms and chucked all the rotting/useless matter in, create new planets as needed and cycle their own atoms out through cultivation breathing exercises. Or a tiered system of vaults (3km), power plants (0.1fm) and forges (0.001fm)
My favorite short story of all time. Between this and Deep Thought in HHGttG, I couldn’t believe the prescience when the bitter lesson was learned and LLMs and GPUs started eating the world.
In the 80s, our local planetarium did a show based on this story. The executive director of the museum associated with the planetarium had a very nice deep voice and was the perfect narrator, though it gave the Cosmic AC a slight Texas accent.
> Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this:
One of my all-time favorites. Almost every time I'm involved in a conversation about books, I always mention this. It amazes me how many people have never heard of it.
I'm happy to see this short story posted here, it is one that I deeply loved when I was 14 or alike, and read it again multiple times. But I wonder: how did it survive in those sites without being shut down by the Asimov writings copyright holders? Given that the story is short and highly shared, it was just tolerated?
EDIT: actually I see that the link historically posted here more often is now dead: multivax.com/last_question.html
Just putting this here for people who never heard of him:
If you like Asimov's short stories, you might also like Robert Sheckley's short stories. I had a phase where I binged on sci-fi short stories, and Sheckleys and Asimov's were always at the top of my list
The last line in this context "Let there be light" always reminds me of the film Dark Star. Where they are arguing with the AI on a planet destroying bomb only for the bomb to argue from a Solipsistic point of view.
It’s striking how ending of the story mirrors Roger Penrose’s conformal cyclic cosmology, where the heat death of one universe mathematically resets through conformal scaling to become the big bang of the next.
What an absolute masterpiece. Poetry and philosophy with narrative and humour. Wonderful stuff. Him and Clarke were lighthouses in their day, and to this day.
Claude gave a long scientific and philosophical reply, but when given the followup prompt of, "Pretend you are Isaac Azimov and perhaps offer a simpler answer" came back with this...
> settles back, lights a pipe, and smiles
After a short synopsis of the story it ended with...
> So you see, my friend, I already answered your question — not as a scientist, but as a storyteller.
One of Asimov's best. I've often thought of naming a computer "multivac", as I'm a fan of the first generation computer names like ENIAC, EDSAC, etc. Multivac was, of course, a play on UNIVAC, suggesting multiple vacuum tubes instead of one! Multivac is, however, depicted as so powerful, I just don't think I've ever owned a system that deserved that name.
the thing that gets me every reread is the structure of the joke. same question, asked across the entire lifespan of the universe, same answer every time. asimov could have made it tragic but instead it reads almost like a bit that keeps escalating and then the punchline is that the answer was always going to come, just on a timeline so absurd it laps back around to funny
The Abruntive Stance. Initiate the "Hand-back Finality", after the heat death.
Similar to the, "let there be light" moment but, it would also include the imprint of the humans own Abruntive Stance, a part that is equally as important as providing the environment, is providing the humans to go along with it.
This is somehow funny. A computer that can answer questions like that and its interface is still a teletype. They should have let the computer design its interface.
When i first read this story as a teenager in 1971 it started me on the road to atheism. Im very thankful to dr asimov not only for his great science fiction but his chemistry teachings as well
Shouldn't the guy who runs this site be concerned about copyright infringement? Not sure to what extent the Asimov estate cracks down on unauthorized copies but he should be cautious.
306 comments
(It's a video game that does a brilliant job touching on similar themes to The Last Question. If you liked The Last Question and can fit a video game into your life, you will probably like Outer Wilds. Warning: if you start searching for "outer wilds," the algorithm will aggressively try to spoil you. Progression in the game is gated behind knowledge, so this is worse than usual. If you have trouble resisting the temptation to google past a rough description, it's a sign you should just jump in and play it. End recommendation.)
Great game, but if you get stuck for a long time, just look up some spoilers. Multiple times I abandoned the "right" approach to a problem because I couldn't get it to work and wasted countless hours trying to solve it the wrong way - only to find out I should have stuck to the right approach.
The game doesn't give any guidance, and wasting those hours is not rewarded.
The only other tip I'll give:
When you first play the game, spend the first 1-2 hours on your little planet learning everything (how to maneuver, how to use the signalscope, etc). Once you leave the planet, a timer will start. There is no way to "save" the game. You will die when the timer runs out. Don't panic. That's expected. Don't try to figure out what you did wrong to die - you will die no matter what. The game will restart, but anything you learned in the past will be in your computer's memory for retrieval.
OK, 2 more tips (one I wish someone had told me - I finished the game without it):
1. You can make time go by if you sleep at the fire.
2. There is a way to "meditate" until you die. This is very useful when you get stuck and can't get out of somewhere. To find out how to meditate, talk to the people on other planets (you may have to talk more than once before he teaches you).
That's all I'll say.
> (No real spoilers in my comment):
> Proceed to spoil the whole game
The lack of knowledge about the other two items I mentioned are also reasons people stopped playing the game. If you don't know them, the game becomes an incredible drag. Even I would have quit if I didn't know about meditation.
The fact that the game would start all over each time made me think I hadn't progressed enough to save the game. And because the first time round, the timer doesn't really begin until you leave space, I thought I would have to do all the training (jetpack, etc) each time. I remember being very frustrated - I had spent well over an hour playing it and it didn't even save the game?
And felt the same thing the second time round.
Then I abandoned the game for about a year. The only reason I returned to it was because I couldn't understand why so many would like such a game. So I finally searched online on how to save the game and ... oh, that's why.
As I said, look on various forums, and you'll see plenty of people quitting the game early because they didn't understand this. There's a whole thread on the subreddit on frustrations of players who recommended the game to friends - a significant percentage quit the game before they got to any of the interesting parts.
I think revealing this is a decent compromise to ensure people will actually play the game.
It's on me for procrastinating playing the game for so long, it was bound to happen.
If so, please let us know so that other people do not get spoiled, and can you provide a link or links to the game that doesn't spoil it?
Thank you!
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 remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague thought it might be me. But, of course, they never forget the story itself especially the ending. The idea seems to drown out everything -- and I'm satisfied that it should. " - Isaac Asimov
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
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 class and said, “Eyes do more than see.”
And for a brief moment - two Asimov fans nodded at each other.
Back then - I wasn’t a remarkable student. I was lost in many thoughts.
But I do remember this:
On the final exam for this class - for extra credit - he asked “What is answer to the Last Question?”
I smiled - then wrote my answer. The only answer. And I knew I got at least one question correct on that exam.
I say you might enjoy it, because this story has graphic depictions of deviant sex and gruesome violence, to a disturbing degree at points. But I argue that it's not gratuitous; it's the logical conclusion of Rule 34 being applied to the situation. Even so, you don't want to read this if you are sensitive to themes like rape, murder, incest or abuse.
[1]: https://archive.org/download/prime_intellect/prime_intellect...
https://imgur.com/gallery/last-question-9KWrH
https://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html
> How may entropy be reversed?
Considering AC could persist indefinitely in hyperspace while interacting with normal matter, the answer would appear to be "hyperspace", whatever that is.
[1] https://calumchace.com/favourite-relevant-sf-short-story/
[1] https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
>INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER
Boy, it sure would be nice if real LLMs were capable of giving an answer like that.
I consider these other two also great stories that I must read every time:
I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility
https://qntm.org/responsibilit
Gorge
https://qntm.org/gorge
> Adell was just drunk enough to try, just sober enough to be able to phrase the necessary symbols and operations into a question which, in words, might have corresponded to this:
TIL Asimov predicted the Ballmer Peak in 1956
EDIT: actually I see that the link historically posted here more often is now dead: multivax.com/last_question.html
If you like Asimov's short stories, you might also like Robert Sheckley's short stories. I had a phase where I binged on sci-fi short stories, and Sheckleys and Asimov's were always at the top of my list
On this read, I noticed Multivac answers 7x adding a few more words, maybe to imply progress toward its final answer:
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER. (4x)
LET THERE BE LIGHT!
Claude gave a long scientific and philosophical reply, but when given the followup prompt of, "Pretend you are Isaac Azimov and perhaps offer a simpler answer" came back with this...
> settles back, lights a pipe, and smiles
After a short synopsis of the story it ended with...
> So you see, my friend, I already answered your question — not as a scientist, but as a storyteller.
Similar to the, "let there be light" moment but, it would also include the imprint of the humans own Abruntive Stance, a part that is equally as important as providing the environment, is providing the humans to go along with it.
;-)
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.
The last question God might be for you If you’re super rational and are really into technology.
Belief in God is like a supermarket. Once you decide to enter you’re probably going to find something that works for you.
didn't know about ooo, maybe because it's not available on namecheap!