Study 077 - The Last Question

Outtro music is fantastic 🖤

Drasferatu

It’s pretty funny that if you combine this one with Kurt Vonnegut’s “Sirens of Titan” you essentially get the main crux of “Hitchhikers’ guide to the Galaxy”. Great job as always. Would love to hear you guys tackle Vonnegut someday!

I read this story for the first time while browsing the campus library and stumbling across an anthology of Asimov's stories and it stuck with me ever since. At the time, I was losing my faith and the last line really hit me. Having a man-made entity start of a new universe with the same words that the mythology I'd just abandoned claimed started this one was a powerful idea, and the notion that man has both the ability and the responsibility to make his own miracles lodged itself in my brain ever afterwards.

Citizen Cain, PhD

I remember this as one of those stories I read at 13 or so and felt my mind explode, knew that I was an uber-nerd seeing the secrets of life, the universe and everything. This was funny because as I have written before I just always found Asimov as mr twist for twist sake even at that tender age. I recall doubting it was really one of his, that somebody made a mistake and forgot to put Clarke or Bradbury on the title page. It did eventually become clear how o henry wannabe this story is like virtually all of Asimov. I don’t know why that puts me off his stuff so much considering how from that same age and up to today H.P. gets a pass every time with mirror rapping self-realizing ghouls or junkies taking the time to finish writing out their exclamation of terror before politely diving out the window. Asimov though just comes off as that annoying uncle who’s more clever than got your nose pranks, but just barely. Having said all that, I’ve loved the innumerable tiktoks of him on various talk shows in the 70s speaking on atheism, science education and whatnot. I definitely would’ve loved having him as that annoying uncle, but when he started one of his stories, I would go to the kitchen to get another coke before he got to his big ending. One can only sigh and roll eyes so much so often.

I've always thought this story is a comforting rebuttal to that nagging voice of nihilism that occasionally butts its way into my day and says "you know, ultimately, nothing we can create matters, because it will all end and so will all memories thereof." Maybe our understanding of the laws of entropy at this time are like Newtons Laws to Cosmic AC's quantum mechanics.

I'm not always a big fan of Asimov, but this was an interesting one, made more so by the discussion at the end. I interpreted the final quote not as alluding to deism, but maybe a gentle joke. That we don't need an unknowable higher power (god) but that the universe is a sum of its parts and the creation of the universe might be connected to a small but logical sequence of completely rational events. Great discussion at the end of this episode, which is why we use our present to listen to you guys :)