Multivac

Franchise

Contains: The Martian Way Sally The Fun They Had Franchise The Last Question Profession

Question

Someday

The Dead Past

Jokester

The Last Question

"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov, first published in Science Fiction Quarterly in November 1956. Asimov considered it his favorite of all his own works. Told in seven vignettes spanning billions of years, the story follows humanity's recurring attempts to answer a single question: can entropy be reversed? It begins in 2061, when two technicians drunkenly pose the question to Multivac — a vast supercomputer that has just solved Earth's energy crisis. The story then leaps forward through the ages. Civilization spreads across galaxies, merges with its machines, and eventually transcends physical form entirely. Yet across all this time, the question goes unanswered. Every iteration of the computer, growing ever more powerful and abstract, can only respond: "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER." At the end of time, with the universe cold and dark and humanity long dissolved into a collective consciousness, the last mind poses the question one final time — then ceases to exist. Only the computer remains, alone in hyperspace, still working on the problem. When it finally finds the answer, there is no one left to hear it. So it does

All the Troubles of the World

Anniversary

Part two of a collection of science fiction short stories. Anniversary The Billiard Ball The Dead Past The Dying Night The Fun They Had The Last Question Mirror-Image

The Machine that Won the War

My Son, the Physicist

Key Item

Point of View

The Life and Times of Multivac

True Love

Think!

Moxon's Master - short story by Ambrose Bierce The Lost Machine - novelette by John Wyndham Rex - short story by Harl Vincent Robbie - short story by Isaac Asimov Farewell to the Master - novelette by Harry Bates Robot's Return - short story by Robert Moore Williams Though Dreamers Die - novelette by Lester del Rey Fulfillment - novelette by A. E. van Vogt Runaround - novelette by Isaac Asimov I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream - short story by Harlan Ellison The Evitable Conflict - novelette by Isaac Asimov A Logic Named Joe - short story by Murray Leinster Sam Hall - novelette by Poul Anderson I Made You - short story by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Triggerman - short story by J. F. Bone War with the Robots - short story by Harry Harrison Evidence - novelette by Isaac Asimov 2066: Election Day - short story by Michael Shaara If There Were No Benny Cemoli - novelette by Philip K. Dick The Monkey Wrench - short story by Gordon R. Dickson Dial F for Frankenstein - short story by Arthur C. Clarke The Macauley Circuit - short story by Robert Silverberg Judas - short story by John Brunner Answer - short story by Fredric Brown The Electric Ant - short story by Philip K. Dick The Bicentennial M