riassunto esame isaac asimov, Temi di Inglese

Scarica riassunto esame isaac asimov e più Temi in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov was a very prolific author who is now considered as the father of the science fiction genre. He had a lot of success in his life thanks to all his work. One in particular is “The last question” considered as the perfect short story. The last question This short story is considered as a perfect example of the genre, since it has all the “well mixed ingredients”. In fact, this is not very long, its memorable, thrilling and full of suspense. These ingredients work together in a way that it arouses curiosity in the reader, making the reading of the story an enjoyable experience. The turning point of the story coincides with a question which recurs throughout the whole story, which produces a chain of reaction of advancements and refinements in the protagonist of the story: a giant computer originally created by the humans. This short story is made of episodes, which are well planned. Indeed, each one of them is a high-tech step that provide a jump into these distant future. As we can see by reading this work, it has al the typical elements of the science fiction genre, such as space travel, computers, galaxies, technological progress… but these are only a pretext to introduce those big questions that are ancient as the world itself and the mystery that had never been solved by the human genre (ex. How was the universe created? Who created everything that exist nowadays?…). This story is built around these questions, and our curiosity is kept alive by the unexpected final, which results brilliant and humorous because it exploit a really original hypothesis regarding the origin pf the universe. In the end, the computer which had never had enough information to give an answer to those who were asking how to recreate the universe out of dying stars, until the end, when he had finally collected all the necessary datas. At this point, though, the universe, as well as the computer, had evolved, the human genre doesn’t exist anymore, so it has nobody to refer the answer too. The final line of the story is a clear parallel with the bible, in fact it says “Let there be light” since the main duty of the computer became to reverse Chaos in light and order. From this observation we can notice the comparison between the religious god and this new technological god, created by Asimov’s imagination. They’re similar under a lot of aspects, such as they’re bot immensely powerful, located outside space and time, as well outside of the human conception and they both want order instead of Chaos. But there’s just one relevant difference: the god of the bible is absolutely other from man, while Asimov’s god has been created, programmed and in part assisted by humans. The ending of the story exploit a really nitty, powerful, and deep meaning, and this thanks to Asimov’s knowledge of the desire of the man to give answers to the mystery of life, to give it a face in order to make it less fearful and distant trying to impose limit to the idea of eternity. Asimov manage to give an answer through this perfect short story, which entertained millions or reader by being extremely serious. EPISODES First episode This is the longest episode of the story, also the more detailed. • Main character: MULITVAC, a giant computer which is very sophisticated and complex, but it still needs human attendance. • Secondary characters: Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov • Discovery: The human kind, or better MULTIVAC, finds out how to exploit solar energy in order to make space travel possible, but just inside the solar system. • Problem: The energy won’t be enough for everybody in the future. • Turning point: How can the entropy of the universe be reversed? • Answer from the computer: “Insufficient data for meaningful question”. Second episode The second episode of Asimov’s short story is a bit less long than the first one. • Main character: MICROVAC, it’s not as big as before, in fact now it’s a length of a spaceship, fixed into teh ceiling. But MICROVAC is connected to the Planetary AC, which is a reference for all the computers since it plans roots for space travelling. MICROVAC doesn’t need any human attendance: it is now self adjusting. • Secondary characters: The Gerards, a family that is traveling to another planet because the earth is nw overcrowded. • Discovery: Hyperspace jumps, which means travelling from a galaxy to another. • Problem: Still, the energy is not enough, but this time it’s not enough for everybody to travel from one star to another, so people will be force to stop migrating and colonising the universe. • Turning point: How can the entropy of the universe be reversed? • Answer from the computer: “Insufficient data for meaningful question”. Third episode It is shorter than the second episode. • Main character: Galactic AC. It’s still a pretty big computer, in fact it’s a whole world itself. It is connected to every AC contacts, which are devices owned by everybody. • Secondary characters: VJ-23X and MQ-17J • Discovery: Immortality. Humans are now “perfectly formed” and immortal due to the Galactic AC’s help. • Problem: Immortality will cause overpopulation of the galaxy and the consequent running out of the energy. • Turning point: How can the entropy of the universe be reversed? • Answer from the computer: “Insufficient data for meaningful question”. Fourth episode It’s even shorter then the third. • Main character: Universal AC. It’s located in the space but nobody knows where. It’s a really complex system. Each Universal AC has to create its successor, which will be even more complex then the one before. • Secondary characters: Zee Prime and Dee Sub Wun. They are just minds stored in planets and attended by robots. They have a curiosity: they want to know where is the original galaxy where human life started. But they loose soon interest because they realise that every galaxy is the same. • Discovery: People are now able to live without physical bodies since Universal AC has arranged for the body to be attended by robots while minds are able to live free. In this way, these minds communicate through telepathy. They also discovered how to build up stars from interstellar hydrogen. • Problem: The problem is still the one regarding energy. In fact it’s always less and they still did not discover how to reverse entropy. • Turning point: How can the entropy of the universe be reversed? • Answer from the computer: “Insufficient data for meaningful question”. Fifth episode It’s really short. • Main character: Cosmic AC. It is situated in the hyperspace, but nobody really know where it’s precisely located, how its made or how it works. • Secondary characters: In this case, there is just one character other than the protagonist. It’s Man, made of all the minds existing in the universe. We know that mortal bodies are still well preserved on planets. • Discovery: Cosmic AC made possible for trillion on minds to melt all in one collective Man. It also discovers how to make two stars collapse in order to get sufficient energy to build other stars, more precisely white dwarfs, even though this process allows to create just a few stars. • Problem: The universe is ending an every little energy us left.