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…