A question from Jason, my brother.

from Jason
to Joan
date 23 March 2009 22:00
subject Hey

Hey Joan,

You know that short story we read ages ago?
It had to do with the evolution of God.
Starting off with humans wanting to calculate entropy (or something like that) – and they built a computer, and the computer couldn’t do it, so it built a successor. Computer after computer, until eventually the computer was smart enough to figure it out – but existed only as pure energy. Unfortunately by the time it figured it out, there were no humans to tell, so it said “Let there be light..” and the process started again.

That short story – remember that? I’m trying to find it, any clues?

Ta

[Then…]

from Joan
to Jason
date 23 March 2009 22:11
subject Re: Hey

Hi Jason,

I was thinking about this story a while ago and I couldn’t remember where it had come from. I think it was by a famous science fiction author.

…I think it’s this one!!! ‘The Last Question’ by Isaac Asimov, indeed a famous author. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Joan

One of the best science fiction short stories ever. Read it!

[Update…]

from Jason
to Joan
date 23 March 2009 22:21
subject Re: Hey

that’s it! good find. how’d you manage that while typing an email??

from Joan
to Jason
date 23 March 2009 22:24
subject Re: Hey

Heh. I’ve now blogged about it too — http://www.joanko.net. I’m so fast 🙂

I thought it might be by Arthur C Clarke or Isaac Asimov. I searched in Google and ‘arthur c clarke humans build computer that becomes god short story’ and ‘isaac asimov humans build computer that becomes god short story’. The second search got it!