A List of Isaac Asimov's Books
asimovonline.com
asimovonline.com
It really disturbs me that a lot of people in US consider Asimov "no longer relevant". One, his works aged really well - as long as you don't expect stories about smartphones and cat videos. Two, his works are huge outside of English-speaking countries. In that context they seem to be far more popular than most books that Americans consider "American classics". (Just look at all the references in Anime, for example.) That ought to tell you something.
I leave it as an exercise to find a copy of this story... I'm sure it's easy to do. It's really worth it.
"""
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)
Re: relevance - I'd argue that both he and PKD are more relevant than ever - Asimov probed the forces that shape society, the impact of automation, the decadent decay of empire, and the all too human reactions to forces both inhuman and inhumane, and PKD probed how we each shape our individual and collective realities, and the myriad fashions in which this could go disastrously wrong with ever escalating and increasingly magical technologies.
Hell, I almost think it should be compulsory that policymakers are made to read their respective corpii!
This is part of what makes his works so timeless. Many of his works were a warning about the dangers of tech on imagination, on curiosity, on our ability to learn and the control we give up for comfort. Others works spoke of technology bypassing us morally or testing our own morality. Lots of stuff in between.
I've seen lots of samples of his thinking and influence on modern sci-fi over the last two decades. Whether Asimov influenced such works or we're just catching up to much of what he wrote - hard to say.
It's been a long while since I've read Asimov. Time to start again:-)
(And it really ought to be free: 50 years old, by a writer 25 years dead now.)
#460 on this list is "The Complete Stories Volume 1" which includes the short story version (as well as many other all-time-classic stories).
[1]: http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
It is very refreshing to see how high the important-stuff/useless-details ratio is compared to some modern authors.
I cannot stress enough what an incredible force for good Asimov had (and hopefully continues to have) on society. I remember reading "the World of Carbon" and not being able to put it down -- a non-fiction organic chemistry book! The high quality and sheer volume of work he output are each impressive on their own, but combined are astounding.
I love the opening sentence of "Lastborn" from Galaxy Magazine 1958:
Edith Fellowes smoothed her working smock as she always did before opening the elaborately locked door and stepping across the dividing line between the "is" and the "is not"
http://www.sikander.org/foundation.php http://kaedrin.com/fun/asimov/aguide.html