(Probably Found) Book search

[animusargentis]

I've been looking for this particular book for years... And I've never ACTUALLY read it. I've only ever read a blurb for it (at the end of a book I no longer have), which read something similar to "The year is 3234 AD. Mankind has achieved unity, peace and interstellar travel, mastered biology, physics and all branches of science, but still one answer remains left undiscovered. In a desperate attempt to find the answer to the last question, every computer in the known galaxy was hooked to a single mainframe and asked a single question. "Is there a God?" The Reply? "THERE IS NOW."

I can't remember the title -- but that blurb has stuck with me since I was eleven years old. The book in question was 'Journey to the Center.' (Not the Jules Verne title.)

Does anyone know any book that would resemble this?! I've been looking for it for years!!!

 

[chrispenycate]

Are you sure it's an entire book? The Fredric Brown 1954 very short story (he'd have been a worthwhile entrant in the seventy-five word challenge) "answer" (http://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html) squeezes it down to half a page, and just about every SF fan for a couple of decades had read it, so using that as a closing line (unless you turned it inside out somehow) would be very predictable.

And I believe the original joke, told about UNIVAC, was even older.

 

[iansales]

It's an Asimov story, 'The Last Question', I believe.

 

[chrispenycate]

Isn't "The Last Question" 'Can entropy ever be reversed?', with the punch line "Let there be light"?

 

[dask]

Are you sure it's an entire book? The Fredric Brown 1954 very short story (he'd have been a worthwhile entrant in the seventy-five word challenge) "answer" (http://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html) squeezes it down to half a page, and just about every SF fan for a couple of decades had read it, so using that as a closing line (unless you turned it inside out somehow) would be very predictable.

And I believe the original joke, told about UNIVAC, was even older.

Not quite the closing line; after the computer says "Yes, now there is a God.", the story continues for three more sentences (at least in THE BEST OF FREDRIC BROWN it does.)

I don't think Asimov's "The Last Question" is the story either. Rather than ending with a computer pronouncing itself deity, it concludes with the rather Biblical:
And the AC said, "Let there be LIGHT!"
And there was light ---

Not sure what the connection is with this.

 

[dask]

Oh, you beat me to it, Mr. Chris, posting while I was replying. Wasn't trying to show you up.