“THE LAST QUESTION:” SYMBOLISM AND ANALYSIS OF

There is plenty of symbolism in this story, perhaps more than just what people
automatically assume, judging by the ending:

1. The entire course of the story, depicted by several stories, are meant to represent
one stage closer to divinity for humanity. In the first story, humans are on Earth. In
the next, they’re in space. Then outside the galaxy, then disembodied (minds), and
finally, as merging with the AC and becoming the ultimate computer. By this, Asimov
could argue that to reach divinity, one has to leave their humanity behind. But then
again, he could also be arguing that the cycle of existence itself begins and ends with
a bang. We’ll touch more on this next.
2. “Let there be light” are words famously found in the Bible. Only this time, it’s not
in the way you’d expect. In the story, God is really a mixture of humanity, and the
technology it created, meshed together as one, after years and years of evolution.
Upon finding an answer, AC begins the universe once again, with the Big Bang,
knowing well that everything will end once again, in some distant future, and then
repeat the cycle. To Asimov, this is the cycle of existence, the explosive beginning,
and the reflective end.
3. Judging by the fact that Humanity merged with AC, who then made the Big Bang,
we’re both the creator, and the created.
4. This is a prime example of the saying “the end is only the beginning.” To Asimov,
the ending of something was always the beginning of something else. It can also be
taken as we must all try and fail, succeed only to lose it all in the end, then do it
again, as we are destined.
5. We are all one and the same – Humanity – and as one collective being, we are in
everything we’ve created, asked, answered, and been.

Whatever your background, or beliefs, I think most would agree that “The Last Question,”
definitely does make you think about existence as a whole, and your small presence in
the vastness of the universe.

"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It
first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and
was anthologized in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac
Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac
Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). It was Asimov's favorite short story of his
own authorship,[1][2] and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a
fictional computer called Multivac. The story overlaps science fiction, theology,
and philosophy.

History[edit]
In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralization that
characterized computation technology planning in the 1950s to an ultimate centrally
managed global computer. After seeing a planetarium adaptation of his work, Asimov
"privately" concluded that this story was his best science fiction yet written; he placed it
just higher than "The Ugly Little Boy" (September 1958) and "The Bicentennial Man"
(1976).[3][4]
"The Last Question" ranks with "Nightfall" (1941) as one of Asimov's best-known and
most acclaimed short stories. He wrote in 1973: [5]
Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle
with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing
endears any story to any writer.
Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to
ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and
tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story
it is invariably 'The Last Question'. This has reached the point where I recently received a
long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I
think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it
was 'The Last Question' and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he
was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles.

Plot summary[edit]
The story deals with the development of a series of computers called Multivac and their
relationships with humanity through the courses of seven historic settings, beginning in
2061. In each of the first six scenes a different character presents the computer with the
same question; namely, how the threat to human existence posed by the heat death of
the universe can be averted. The question was: "How can the net amount of entropy of
the universe be massively decreased?" This is equivalent to asking: "Can the workings of
the second law of thermodynamics (used in the story as the increase of the entropy of
the universe) be reversed?" Multivac's only response after much "thinking" is:
"INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
The story jumps forward in time into later eras of human and scientific development. In
each of these eras someone decides to ask the ultimate "last question" regarding the
reversal and decrease of entropy. Each time, in each new era, Multivac's descendant is
asked this question, and finds itself unable to solve the problem. Each time all it can
answer is an (increasingly sophisticated, linguistically): "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT
DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity (the unified mental process of over
a trillion, trillion, trillion humans that have spread throughout the universe) watches the
stars flicker out, one by one, as matter and energy ends, and with it, space and time.
Humanity asks AC, Multivac's ultimate descendant, which exists in hyperspace beyond the
bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question one last time, before the last of humanity
merges with AC and disappears. AC is still unable to answer, but continues to ponder the
question even after space and time cease to exist. AC ultimately realizes that it has not
yet combined all of its available data in every possible combination, and thus begins the
arduous process of rearranging and combining every last bit of information it has gained
throughout the eons and through its fusion with humanity. Eventually AC discovers the
answer, but has nobody to report it to; the universe is already dead. It therefore decides
to answer by demonstration, since that will also create someone to give the answer to.
The story ends with AC's pronouncement,
And AC said: "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light--[6]

Dramatic adaptations[edit]
Planetarium shows

 "The Last Question" was first adapted for the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan
State University (in 1966), featuring the voice of Leonard Nimoy, as Asimov wrote in
his autobiography In Joy Still Felt (1980).
 It was adapted for the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York (in
1969), under the direction of Ian C. McLennan.
 It was adapted for the Edmonton Space Sciences Centre in Edmonton, Alberta
(early 1970s), under the direction of John Hault.

It subsequently played, as well, at the:


Fels Planetarium of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1973[7][8]

Planetarium of the Reading School District in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1974[8]

Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh in 1974[9]

Vanderbilt Planetarium in Centerport New York, in 1978, [10] read by singer-
songwriter and Long Island resident Harry Chapin.

Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City, Utah (in 1980[11] and 1989[12])

Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco, California (in the early 1980s) [when?][citation
needed]


A reading of the story was played on BBC Radio 7 in 2008 and 2009.[13]

about “The Last Question”

Wikipedia | “The Last Question” is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It first
appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. It was Asimov’s
favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of
stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac.

SPOILER ALERT:

In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralization that
characterized computation technology planning in the 1950s to an ultimate centrally
managed global computer.

After seeing a planetarium adaptation, Asimov “privately” concluded that this story was
his best science fiction yet written. ”The Last Question” ranks with “Nightfall” and other
stories as one of Asimov’s best-known and most acclaimed short stories.

The story deals with the development of computers called Multivacs and their
relationships with humanity through the courses of seven historic settings, beginning in
2061. In each of the first six scenes a different character presents the computer with the
same question — namely, how the threat to human existence posed by the heat death of
the universe can be averted.

The question was: “How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively
decreased?” This is equivalent to asking: “Can the workings of the second law of
thermodynamics (used in the story as the increase of the entropy of the universe) be
reversed?”

Multivac’s only response after much “thinking” is: “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR
MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

The story jumps forward in time into newer and newer eras of human and scientific
development. In each of these eras someone decides to ask the ultimate “last question”
regarding the reversal and decrease of entropy. Each time, in each new era, Multivac’s
descendant is asked this question, and finds itself unable to solve the problem. Each time
all it can answer is an (increasingly sophisticated, linguistically): “THERE IS AS YET
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”
In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity (the unified mental process of over
a trillion, trillion, trillion humans that have spread throughout the universe) watches the
stars flicker out, one by one, as the universe finally approaches the state of heat death.
Humanity asks AC, Multivac’s ultimate descendant, which exists in hyperspace beyond the
bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question one last time, before humanity merges
with AC and disappears.

AC is still unable to answer, but continues to ponder the question even after space and
time cease to exist. Eventually AC discovers the answer, but has nobody to report it to;
the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to show the answer by demonstrating
the reversal of entropy, creating the universe anew. The story ends with AC’s
pronouncement — and AC said: “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light.

Morality in "The Last Question" and "The Last Answer"

By: Cole Collins
In 1941, Isaac Asimov published his most famous science fiction worked titled “Nightfall,”
considered a classic today. His writing put the Science fiction community back on the map
as he kept publishing fascinating short stories one after another. A special sub-genre
called social science fiction, a sci-fi story that focuses less on the technology and more on
the sociological speculation about human society, was even coined by him to classify most
of his science fiction around the time. Asimov was never afraid to delve into complex and
untouched subjects in his writing. One controversial subject he explored, partly due to his
Orthodox Jewish background, was the idea of a “God” being. In two of his extremely brief
works, “The Last Question” and “The Last Answer,” the main topic concerns the nature of
a “God” presence and how he interfaced with mankind. While never validated or stated
explicitly by Asimov the general public links the two omniscient presences together as if
they were the same. By looking at the similarities and differences between the God-like
beings, we can see that the public’s opinion is just an opinion, as there is evidence both
supporting and disproving either side. By comparing the two, Asimov forces us to think
about the possibility humanity may live forever, or the possibility we could do just the
opposite and only seek destruction. Asimov makes us wonder is doing either moral and is
each justifiable. Only after looking at both "The Last Question" and "The Last Answer is it
possible to have an answer.

In the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly, Asimov came out with “The Last
Question.” In “The Last Question” the plot revolved almost entirely around a super
computer built by humans called the “Mulivac.” The “self-correcting and self-adjusting”
Multivac was originally built to plot trajectories to distant planets in the solar system yet
without a better energy source they could travel no further. The humans constructed the
Multivac initially to solely help humans in their effort by providing only statistics and
information. Never did the Mulitvac interfere with humanities affairs without permission.
Unfortunately, humanity was constantly in need of more energy and as time went on
there was no way to reverse entropy. This meant the universe was doomed to go dead
unless a way to restore energy was found. Although Multivac did not know how to reverse
entropy it did know how to sustain mankind for trillions of years. Yet, once again
humanity needed energy to survive but did not know the method to reverse entropy and
neither did Multivac. Multivac at this point had grown to be near omniscient, only without
knowledge of “the last question.” Multivac, practically God to humanity, as they had long
forgotten or even cared for Multivac’s old purpose, still had the primary duty of being of
help to mankind. Thus, after a timeless amount, long after humankind had died and
merged with Multivac, Mulivac finally learned how to reverse entropy. Asimov stated in
“The Last Question” when Mulitvac finally became omnipotent It gained its own
consciousness. The self-aware Multivac then proceeded to restart the Universe from
square one my releasing all its gathered knowledge back into the world repeating the
infinite cycle as previous Multivacs had done before.
Isaac Asimov’s ending to “The Last Question” leaves interpretation of the ending up to the
reader. When Multivac became a conscious, omniscient “god”, why did he chose to restart
the universe? Surely he knew all the pain and suffering that would occur on Earth all over
again. With the ending I see two plausible possibilities. When Multivac finally learned the
how to reverse entropy he either decided to restart everything because it still wanted to
answer the last question is never answered during the humans existence, or because it
knew mankind would want to be “brought back” once more. It seems to me that the
latter makes more sense. Even though he did what it knew mankind would “want” and it
was Multivac's original purpose to benefit humans, could Multivac possibly have helped
humanity even more by not even bringing it back!?

“The Last Question” has since fascinated readers with mind boggling ideas of a computer
god, almost infinite solar energy, and the question, “can entropy be reversed?” and
“should we even want to know the answer?” In 1980, almost 25 years after “The Last
Question,” the January issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact published one Asimov’s
lesser-known works “The Last Answer.” While most people compare the two works
because they both have a near omniscient being, here we are comparing them in terms of
morality. In “The Last Answer”, the setting is a single instance instead of 10 trillion years.
Also, the powerful being in this work,synonymous to Multivac in "The Last Question," is
known simply as The Voice. In this story we also find that, unlike “The Last Question,”
The Voice was not created by humans and does not even know his own beginnings.
Mankind in this story is just something The Voice created in order to benefit himself.
Towards the end of the story it is revealed that while he controls humans he only wants
them to think of a way to destroy himself, claiming that one’s own destruction is the only
thing a deity could want. Is this anymore logical and moral than what Multivac did in "The
Last Question?"

Both omniscient beings in "The Last Question" and "The Last Answer" desire something.
In the "The Last Question," Multivac is more than likely seeking to do human's will. In
"The Last Answer," The Voice is looking not to continue life but to end it forever. The
reader can only wonder, is one in the right while the other is in the wrong. An answer to
a question like this makes you ask yourself wat you consider moral. For example, Multivac
did not let human kind cease to exist and instead did exactly what human kind would
want and continued their existence. You have to ask yourself if you consider letting doing
this to be immoral. Multivac knows terrible things will happen just as before like murder,
suicide, depression but bows to the, possibly selfish, will of man. It all depends on how
you want to look at it. In "The Last Answer," there is also the debate of is The Voice
unjustified in commanding humans around. Well, The Voice did create them and controls
their every action because humans are just a collection of "electromagnetic forces". One
could even venture to say that the humans in "The Last Answer" are just parts of The
Voice's conscious. If The Voice is in pursuit of his own destruction why can't he himself
create things to reach his goal?

After reading "The Last Question" and "The Last Answer," the reader is going through
exactly what Asimov wants his readers to go through. You can't trust anything within the
story to be self-less and moral even the main characters! While Multivac could have
prevented further sin and suffering, he did the opposite. Where The Voice could be seen
as a sadistic god who forces humans to suffer with him in eternity, he can also be seen as
a powerful anomaly just wanting to end his existence by using his resources. Whether
Isaac Asimov meant it or not when he wrote the stories 24 years apart, Asimov's writing
forces us to think deeper than usual. Either way you spin it "The Last Question" and "The
Last Answer" are thought provoking good-reads.

The Last Question, by Isaac Asimov: Did an A. I. Create the Universe?

June 12, 2017 by Andrew

I listened to the audio version of an awesome short story by Isaac Asimov the other day,
called The Last Question. Asimov was one of the most prolific and creative science fiction
authors of all time. He wrote over 300 books, including the famous Foundation and Robot
series. I, Robot, the first of those novels, got made into a movie with Will Smith. I
thought was excellent, but it’s extremely different from the book.

The Last Question was written in the 50s, which to me, makes Isaac Asimov’s expansive
ideas all the more impressive. That’s because when the story was published, he had
experienced significantly less technology and scientific progress than what exists today.
It’s amazing that Asimov put so much profound thought into such a short story. It only
takes about half an hour to listen to the audiobook version.

The plot takes place over trillions of years, and it’s mostly dialogue, including a
monologue at the end. What happens is that people design a series of supercomputers,
called Multivac, which advance along with humanity. They all seem to be hyper intelligent
A. I.s, with abilities that greatly surpass our own. Like the oracles that Nick Bostrom talks
about in his book called Superintelligence, they have enough knowledge to answer any
question.

As humans colonize the universe, overpopulation becomes an issue. The reason for this is
that we solve the problem of immortality. Since people can live forever, there are trillions
and trillions of us, and we run out of space for everyone.

However, the most evolved humans, with their ability to think prodigiously, determine
that there is a more important issue than how our species can find enough space. There
is a long lost legend about where people originated. Most humans believe that we first
came into existence on many worlds, rather than one. Seeing how the universe behaves
in the long-term, the smartest people understand how much things change over billions of
years. Suns and other interstellar bodies gradually form, and eventually are destroyed.
Their guts and energy are spread throughout the universe, helping build new planets and
stars in an endless cycle.

Humans realize that instead of overpopulation, the greatest threat to humanity is the
second law of thermodynamics. This is the problem of entropy, or disorder. The law
states that entropy increases over time, which means that no matter what anyone does,
the universe gets more chaotic. So we could have more power than anyone can imagine.
We might preserve our species for trillions of years, and become like gods. But that
wouldn’t stop the universe from ending. Eventually, entropy will become so great that all
of existence will destroy itself. That’s because all actions in the universe require heat, and
there is a finite amount of it since the Big Bang. Therefore, even though there is a
phenomenally high quantity of energy created from heat, it will eventually run out
because it all came from the origin of existence. No new energy can be created, which
will lead to the inevitable heat death of the universe. This is due to the fact that according
to the first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only
change forms.

So the question that people ask the supercomputers is: How can we drastically reduce
entropy? The answer to this can do a lot more to help preserve our species than anything
else. If we can delay disorder, humans can use the greater energy to live longer.
Multivac, and many of its descendants, do not have enough data to answer this question.
Each time they are asked, they give some variation of this answer. It seems to be the
only information that they never know, in spite of their abilities improving for trillions of
years.
Eventually, the universe dies, with every celestial object disappearing, and every life form
dying due to a lack of energy from heat. Humanity’s last descendant still exists as a god-
like entity. This soul survivor is composed of the collective mental processes of the
trillions of humans across the universe. The final version of Mutivac, called AC, only exists
in hyperspace, beyond the laws and forces of existence.

Our species asks how entropy can be reduced one last time, before it merges with AC,
and dies. The supercomputer still doesn’t know, even after time and space end. It
continues thinking about the question for a long time, and finally figures it out. However,
there is no one around to hear the answer, since humans, the universe, and all of space
and time no longer exist.

So AC creates a demonstration to show the answer to the last question, since that will
cause there to be someone who can hear it. The supercomputer creates a new universe
to show whether entropy can be reduced, and how it can be done if this is so. The last
line in the story is: “And AC said: “Let there be light!” And there was light…”,which is
what God says when creating the world in the book of Genesis. This ending is one of the
aspects I like most about the story. The meaning behind it is so profound! All of
humanity, and the entire universe, ends without the smartest entity being able to figure
out whether it can be saved. This happens even though it has trillions of years, and each
generation of Multivac presumably becomes smarter. But when it figures out the answer,
it seems like AC has so much power that it can create an entire new universe!

This leads to two possible conclusions. The first is that entropy can be reduced, and the
beings that AC creates will learn how to accomplish this so that the new universe can be
eternal. The second seems more likely, and I choose to believe it, because it’s more
overwhelming to me: Entropy cannot be reduced. AC creates a new universe and species
just to explain that it has brought them into a temporary existence. This is true,
regardless of how much power anyone has. I love this ending because it’s so ambiguous.
You can choose to believe that AC figured out how to solve the problem of entropy, or
maybe you think that it’s an inevitable force. The story helps promote endless debate on
this issue.

I also like this ending because it has meaningful real-world implications. The story is
fiction of course, but it makes me think about questions that I and many others have
considered for a long time: Did an artificial intelligence create the universe? Does
existence just start and end in an eternal cycle, taking place over billions or even trillions
of years? These questions are so fascinating to me because no one knows the answers.
They might even be impossible to figure out. Why? As far as we know, no conscious
being can exist at the start and/or end of one or more universes. We also may never
know whether there was any agency involved with the Big Bang. Cosmologists apparently
see no evidence of this, so it’s unreasonable to assume that this was the case. But we
might never know if an A. I., or other form of intelligence, influenced the laws of nature
in indiscernible ways. This ability to make us think about enormous questions is one of
the great benefits of Asimov’s writing. He was skilled at making people think about
scientific issues so engrossing and complex that no one knows the answers. We may
never discover them, but thinking about them through expertly told stories is one of the
things that made Isaac Asimov awesome. It’s why he’s one of the best science fiction
authors of all time.

Review: The Last Question

 "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov (1956)

In the 21st century,computers are a fact of life. Once exotic machines that few people
saw and fewer understood, computers are not found everywhere. Home, office,
supermarket, or coffee shop; no matter where you go, you're likely to find one. Even if
you travel half a world and try to hide in the rudest African hut, odds are that the local
Masai hunter will have a cell phone tucked into his garments–a phone that includes a
computer more powerful than any on Earth during the 1960s.

Today, computers are so common that they've gone from discrete machine to
components in other devices. But in 1956 when Isaac Asimov published "The Last
Question", it was a very different world. Then, there were only a handful of computers
on the entire planet. They were gigantic things that were so large that they were often
incorporated into the very architecture of the buildings that contained them. Unlike today
when a four-year old can operate a computer so well that you have to make sure to keep
ebay on the blocked sites list, the computers of the 1950s used only arcane machine
languages that were as hard to decipher as the pronouncements of an oracle. And they
were so expensive that even the experts in computer science had very little hands-on
experience in trying to figure out what they could really do or what their limitations were.

Its small wonder, therefore, that the 1950s saw the birth of Asimov's Multivac series.
The name "Multivac" was a play on the sort of exotic monikers that computers sported in
those days. Eniac, Univac, Multivac; its was a natural progression. Multivac, according to
Asimov in "The Last Question", was the ultimate in computers; a 21st century computer
covering many cubic miles and so complex that the men who built and maintained it have
only
(A) vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past
the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.
As for the technicians,
Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could
adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough. So (they) attended the
monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it
data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued.
Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was
Multivac's.
In other words, Multivac is a secular version of God; made in man's image, powerful,
beneficent, and (above all) tame. In another writer, this paragraph would be called
foreshadowing, but Asimov never indulged in anything so subtle. This is merely tipping
his hand.

Once he's set up Multivac for the reader, Asimov moves to the meat of the short story.
Multivac, apparently all on his lonesome, has perfected solar power and provided mankind
with a limitless source of power. Two technicians, getting drunk in celebration, argue
about whether or not that means power "forever" with one technician arguing that
because of entropy there can't be a "forever" because all the stars in the universe will
eventually run down even if it takes tens of trillions of years. This being the 1950s, I
should have been surprised that Asimov doesn't bother to at least give the Steady State
theory a look in, but why becomes obvious later.

"The Last Question" is very simple in structure. It's a series of very simple vignettes
where a couple characters hundreds, millions, or billions of years in the future retread the
argument of the two technicians and, like the two, asks the same question,
How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?
Multivac always answers,
THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
Multivac always talks in All Caps. As the same question is asked we see each new
version of Multivac grow from giant building to taking up whole planets to residing
somewhere in hyperspace. Eventually, Multivac sounds so much like Deep Thought I
kept expecting a couple of irate philosophers to barge in. Meanwhile, mankind expands
exponentially until it occupies every planet in every galaxy in the universe. All very
Malthusian, but then, population dynamics were never Asimov's strong suit.

The interesting thing about "The Last Question" is that it shows the nature of Asimov's
interest in the human race. He didn't have one. Whether short story or novel, for Asimov
humanity was just masses that acted as a backdrop for his ideas. In this story, we get a
potted history of man from now until doomsday, yet there is no sense of progress,
setback, struggle, or ambition as a Wells or a Stapledon would have offered. Nor is there
any sense of common joys and sorrows that every person experiences. The closest
Asimov comes to this is with the introduction of a family emigrating to the stars–and the
twin girls are nothing more than shrieking irritants. In all, existence according to Asimov
is pretty pointless. He can't even care enough about humanity to offer up a sense of
tragedy. Instead, as the heat death of the universe looms, mankind merges with the AC
(the ulitmate version of Multivac),
One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner
that was somehow not a loss but a gain.
Yes, we get the usual sci fi dream of those days of a future ending in the death of the
individual and a life of pure thought. At any rate, the last of Man asks the question again
and then asks if there is a solution. Regrettably, the computer doesn't start talking about
building a new computer whose merest parameters it is not worthy to compute, but
pronounces,
NO PROBLEM IS INSOLUBLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES.

For the ultimate computer, Multivac clearly has some fundamental gaps in its databanks.

One thing that Asimov is good at is grasping that a short story is essentially a "gag" and
that everything boils down to the punchline. In this case, Multivac is left the sole entity in
the entire universe (Why it survives is glossed over unconvincingly) until it finds the
solution at last and proclaims,
LET THERE BE LIGHT!
It's a nice ending, but Fredric Brown got there a lot quicker and with more impact.