THE ARCHIVE // 1956
THE LAST QUESTION
SINGULARITY // MACHINE TRANSCENDENCE
Humanity asks its most powerful computer: can entropy be reversed? Across trillions of years, the question persists until the machine achieves something indistinguishable from godhood.
READ / BORROW
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From the archive
Asimov's personal favorite of all his stories. A computer called Multivac is asked if entropy can be reversed. It cannot answer — until it has consumed all data in the universe and exists outside of time itself. The final line is among the most powerful in science fiction. Widely anthologized; copyright remains with the Asimov estate (US public domain ~2052).