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When I put together a list of the "best" SF shorts a while back by author, this was my choice for Asimov. (IMO I can make an argument for "Nightfall" but that's a novella and other things being equal I was prioritizing shorter works.) That said, Asimov has a lot of good short stories including quite a few of his robot stories.

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Nightfall was also a 13,000 word short story, which was turned into a novella. Many, including me, consider it much tighter. That looks to be about 3-4x the length of The Last Question, though, so I think you're still well justified.

13,000 words is a novelette by the Hugo definition (not novella as I wrote). And I think the expanded version is considered a novel. In any case, I agree that the original was better.

please share your full list with us.

https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/10/80-authors-80-science-...

This list and the shorter prior one were also on HN at some point.

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