Nine tomorrows
Nine Tomorrows is a collection of nine short stories and two pieces of comic verse by American writer Isaac Asimov. The pieces were all originally published in magazines between 1956 and 1958, with the exception of the closing poem, "Rejection Slips", which was original to the collection. The book was first published in the United States in 1959 and in the UK in 1963. It includes two of Asimov's favorite stories, "The Last Question" and "The Ugly Little Boy". Contents "I Just Make Them Up, See!" "Profession" "The Feeling of Power" "The Dying Night" (part of the Wendell Urth series) "I'm in Marsport Without Hilda" "The Gentle Vultures" "All the Troubles of the World" (part of the Multivac series) "Spell My Name with an S" "The Last Question" (loosely part of the Multivac series) "The Ugly Little Boy" "Rejection Slips"
Stats for nerds
1recommend
4mentions
4people
2010–2016years
25% recommend75% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you like short stories I recommend Nine Tomorrows by Issac Asimov & The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
- interestingly enough, there is a FAQ entry for this which goes like
"""
There's this really neat story by Asimov, but I can't remember the title...
The story is probably "The Last Question". It can be found in a number of Asimov's anthologies (it was his favorite of his own stories, after all): Nine Tomorrows Opus 100 The Best of Isaac Asimov The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov Robot Dreams The Complete Stories, volume 1 The Asimov Chronicles It is also found in a number of anthologies not consisting entirely of stories by Asimov.
There is a mathematical possibility that you're thinking of a story other than "The Last Question", but it's very slight. Asimov's own experience was that if someone couldn't remember the title of one of his stories (and especially if they weren't entirely sure if it was by him), then it was "The Last Question."
But just in case, here are some of the stories with titles that often aren't remembered as well as the plot:
* "The Last Question" concerns the fate of the universe, when a computer is asked several times through the ages if entropy can ever be reversed.
* "The Feeling of Power" describes a time in the future, when a young man amazes everyone with his ability to perform mathematical computations in his head, instead of relying on computers like everyone else does.
* "Profession" is about a boy who is brought to a house for the feeble-minded after tests show that he is abnormal, because unlike the others, who are all educated by machines and have their professions chosen for them, he is capable of original thinking.
"""
(it is also my favorite story, FWIW)
- "There are ten thousand men like you, George, who support the advancing technology of fifteen hundred worlds. We can’t allow ourselves to miss one recruit to that number or waste our efforts on one member who doesn’t measure up."
From Nine Tomorrows, as a final year student I remember reading this line from the short story prior to exams and relaxing for just a moment.
- From wikipedia: "It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was reprinted 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"
I personally read it in Robot Dreams, which is a great collection of stories.
