First published in November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. Asimov thought that The Last Question was his best short story ever. 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: “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”