The Question That Outlived the Universe | Asimov's The Last Question

I’ll never get over how great Quinn’s intro music is.

The fact that the final form of the computer is outside of space and time is important because it implies that the loop just starts over again - that humanity creates itself over and over again. "I am the Alpha and the Omega." "I am that I am."

This is one of my favorite Asimov short stories. He was definitely an author who leaned heavily on the technical aspects of science fiction but he often had an undercurrent of spirituality and metaphysics in his work. I remember one of his short stories (I can't remember the name) l about scientists testing a new kind of nuclear weapon and when one of them watches the explosions in slow motion they literally see the devil's face in the fire.

Thank you for covering this story - I read it as a child in a compilation of Asimov's short stories. The little 'let there be light' twist at the end has stuck with me ever since.

I remember reading the story as a kid and was wowed by the clever ending. I recognized at the time that name Multivac was an play on the name Univac, the first commercially available computer in the 1950s. The name was was later reused as a brand for the company's computers.

This story changed how I saw Isaac Asimov, his books - and SciFi itself. And the ending is just beautiful.

There is another short story called "Answer" by Fredric Brown that has a similar idea. Instead of the question being "Can entropy be reversed?" it is "Is there a God?". The answer given is not the one expected, and is chilling in it's implications. That one stuck with me for a long time.

Not to sound like a Quinn fan boy. Lol. Not only does your voice project: intelligence, thoughtfulness, and intent, but you nailed the look too. During the apocalypse if put to a vote, you would definitely get my vote for the new emperor of man. 😂.

I read "The 9 Billion Names of God" decades ago and it really a moving short story and stuck with me throughout my life. I'm now 59.

‘The Last Question’ was the very first Isaac Asimov story I ever read, when I was around 12. I spent that entire summer doing absolutely nothing else except reading Asimov. He had a bigger impact on my adolescent mind than any other author while I was growing up.