The Last Question

The Last Question is a single-concept story spanning trillions of years. At seven scenes, each set in successively later eras, humans ask increasingly sophisticated versions of Multivac whether entropy can be reversed. Each answer is INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER. In each era, the computer becomes more advanced, the human civilization more diffuse and more computational, until in the final scene, after the heat-death of the universe, the merged human-AC consciousness finally has the data, and answers. Asimov considered it his best story. It is his most direct statement that the problem civilizational intelligence is meant to solve is a problem that exceeds any single civilization's lifespan.