One of my favourite stories in this volume is “The Last Question”.

I read this when I was 15, many eons ago. The first SF story I ever read, and it was contained in a paperback entitled "9 Amanhãs" (“9 Tomorrows” in English). I read it first because it was the shortest - 15 year-olds were just as impatient then as they are today. Thanks to Mr. Asimov I've never stopped contemplating the Big Questions. And I've come to see that the scientific and the spiritual are merely attempts, from different perspectives, to understand the universe. It's a universe that has produced, among many other wonders, this magnificent story.

If this is "The Last Question"... I have "More Questions after the Last Question"

- God created the universe, entropy, and man; then man created the ever-evolving computer; then the entropy happened and the evolving computer reversed the entropy and created light.

- What happens next?

- Would there evolve another universe? Another man? Another evolving computer? Another entropy? Another entropy reversal?

- Would the first computer and the second computer know each other's existence? Before or after the next entropy?

- Would the first computer reveal (or not) the entropy-reversal solution to the second computer before the next entropy?

- If the first computer did not reveal itself to the second computer; would the second computer find the answer to reverse the entropy before the entropy occurs?

- Would there be another or more loops (3rd, 4th, 5th,...) of this universe, entropy, man, computer, entropy-reversal?

- How many computers there will be to make more loops of this?

- When will this end…?

Entropy is chaos. Multivac AC is order. The last question is inevitable as it is the end of the universe. So too the answer can only be known once the universe has ended. By knowing all there is to know, Multivac AC becomes the answer to the last question and therefore, the return of the universe to it's beginning of pure order. It's implied that this is an infinite loop with no beginning and no end. There is no before or after or "God" just order descending into chaos and then returning to order once again. That said, we're dealing with imaginary concepts here like "hyperspace" The ability to "think" outside of space and time is, as we currently experience the universe, impossible. Don't expect concrete answers in this short-story; just ideas.

Aw man… Now, of course, it's "hip" to be into Asimov, but that wasn't always the case. When I was reading an average of one science fiction paperback per day, back in my younger days in the 80's, telling someone you were an Asimov fan drew a glazed look and a "huh" from almost everyone you met. It was only when you brought up the young "up and comers" (at the time in Portugal) such as Larry Niven or Harlan Ellison that they perked up. In fact, Isaac always seemed to be passed over for the really cool SF awards, which astonished me because already at that time the "three laws of robotics" were gaining acceptance in every field.

And, yet, nobody mastered the short story in the science fiction field like he did...most likely due to the influence of his “mentorcapt” John Campbell, back in the old pulp magazine days. Although I read the “Foundation” and Robot series several times, it's the shorts that are really amazing. This one is one of his best.

NB: Asimov chauvinist? FFS! The man he's the product of his era! We're talking about the 50s in America...why would we, in the 21st Century, try to replicate 50s Lebensraum into "contemporary" a social diversity one within particular Earth societies? SF isn't supposed to be a vehicle for congratulating ourselves on contemporary racial or gender politics (aka "diversity"); it's not about imagining a future that validates a particular moment of racial or gender politics in 21st century Earth and is "representative" of that moment's political pieties (such as representing certain 'good' social groupings in a positive light). That's a confused artifact of the impulse to moralize and constrain literature, an impulse which is particularly ill-suited to SF -- which, by definition, is looking to move far beyond the contemporary realm. Anyone is free to write and publish any kind of novel they want. If the story you want has not been written. Then write it. If the characters you want don't exist, then create them. Should SF writers ignore the diversity that exists on Planet Zarg? How often do they assume that because someone comes from Zarg they behave in a Zargish manner and have Zargish ideas and that all Zargoids are interchangable. Perhaps Zargoids come in many shades of green and have alternate relationships between the three genders...of course, the most important question is: "What is Zargish poetry like?"...

The witch hunt continues.

SF = Speculative Fiction ( )

The title given for this is wrong. It is Complete stories, volume 1 (of 3) early Asimov from the 50's. It includes all contents of three separate collections one of which I have read before, Nightfall and other stories.
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A compilation of stories written by the Master of Science Fiction: Isaac Asimov! If hard science fiction is your forte, this is your delight!

This 600+ page book of short stories is a pretty good collection of Asimov's early 1950s work. Some of the stories are very, very good, such as "Nightfall," which I was delighted to find had been turned into a full novel later, which I recently bought and intend to read. Others are not quite as good. One that irritated me was "I'm in Marsport Without Hilda," where a man comes "home" to a space station after being out in space for a long time and as he'll be heading for the planet and his wife in another day, he contacts a local woman for a one nighter -- even though he's married. Events occur that delay their tryst and she gets impatient with him and I guess the humor lies in his attempts to solve everything so they can get together and hit the sack. Finally, everything has been taken care of and he's ready to go meet the whore, when he hears a woman call his name and turns around to find his wife unexpectedly greeting him -- and he's ticked. To me, this was a very offensive and sexist story. I didn't think it merited inclusion in an anthology of collected works since it was in such poor taste. But then, as I've discovered, Asimov -- if you go by his early work -- was a bit of a sexist himself, as he rarely used female characters and with one exception I can think of, when he did, they were typically window dressing -- poor, helpless, empty headed dullards completely dependent on men to save them from whatever was happening to them. Oh, and as we learn in one story here, woman like to talk. A lot. I guess that's all they do. Pig. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt by saying maybe he was a product of his times. It was the 1950s after all and women's lib hadn't occurred and a woman's place was in the home, so maybe.... And I haven't read enough of his later work to know differently, although I just finished Foundation's Edge today and it had strong female characters, although one was evil. It was written in the 1980s. Maybe he adjusted with the times.

In any event, the stories in the book are largely pretty good, until you get to about the last 100 pages or so and then the quality of the work drops off immensely. I'm not sure why that is, but the last several stories are quite bad. There's a marked difference between them and the earlier pieces. Again, I don't know why the editors decided to do it that way, but that's just the way it happened, so I guess you have to live with it. One thing that was interesting is Asimov's obsession with computers, using one giant computer he calls "Multivac" repeatedly in his stories. Multivac is a computer that pretty much runs the world and everything in it. It is hundreds of miles big and spits out data punch cards, much like the giant 1950s-era computers did, requiring specially trained computer programmers and operators to interpret its results and instructions. He also worries about man versus machine and sides with man virtually every time, which is interesting as he is constantly writing about machines such as robots. I find Multivac interesting because it's proof that Asimov had absolutely no sci fi foresight like other sci fi writers, such as Philip K. Dick, did. He never was really able to guess at desktops, laptops, smart phones, or anything like that. Meanwhile, so many other early sci fi writers were able to envision things such as these that I am continually amazed that Asimov maintains the massive sci fi reputation he enjoys. Personally, I think he was stuck in a 1950s nuclear-era technology rut with absolutely little ability to think ahead creatively like so many of his peers and while the stories in this book are generally pleasantly well written, except for much dialogue, which Asimov always seems to have problems writing, his writing skills don't even begin to measure up to so many other sci fi writers, it's not even funny. Personally, I think he had several decent ideas and could tell a decent story, but then so could hundreds of other writers, so in my opinion, he was just a hack. I can easily name numerous other sci fi writers who are infinitely better than he ever was.

Whatever the case, and no matter how poorly Asimov wrote most of his novels, most of these short stories are quite good and are pretty well written. I assume he must have had a good editor. This book is the highest rated book I have ever seen on Goodreads, with a 4.36 out of 5 score. I certainly don't think it deserves a 5 at all and I'm not even sure it deserves a 4, but I'm going ahead and giving it one just because so much of it was entertaining and after all, isn't that what you want out of a good short story? I'm curious, now, to see how his writing matured in the '60s, so if I see Volume 2 of this series, I'll probably get it. As for this book? Recommended. ( )

From the author that inspired the I-Robot, and the Bicentennial man movie, this is a collection of some of his short works. I particularly liked `Profession', `Franchise', `Satisfaction guaranteed' , `Nightfall', oh heck, I liked each and every one of them! ( )