Templeton decides, therefore, to direct his thoughts towards spiting the Voice, whom he regards as a capricious entity, by destroying himself.

The physicist is appalled by the idea of thinking and discovering for no reason but to amuse a being capable of easily out-thinking him with a bit of effort. Conversing with the Voice, Templeton learns that the Voice desires original thoughts by which to please His curiosity, but surrenders that yes, in fact, if He so desired, the Voice could happen upon those thoughts himself, of his own effort. The Voice informs him that all of the Universe is a creation of the Voice, the purpose of which was to result in intelligent life which, after death, the Voice could cull for his own purposes-to wit, Templeton, like all the others, is to think, for all eternity, so as to amuse him.

The Voice concludes that, while by all human ideas he most resembles God, he is contrary to any human conception of the being. This being, referred to as the Voice, tells the physicist the nature of his life after death, as a nexus of electromagnetic forces. It was first published in the January 1980 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and reprinted in the collections The Winds of Change and Other Stories (1983), The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986), and Robot Dreams (1986).Īn atheist physicist, Murray Templeton, dies of a heart attack and is greeted by a being of supposedly infinite knowledge. ' The Last Answer' is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov.

Not to be confused with The Last Question.

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