I think if a story gives you a sense of wonder when you're young, it's a good story, even if it seems cheesy later. Probably the reason it doesn't later is that you saw so many things like that when you were young and they don't surprise you anymore.
Who's writing good scifi these days which evoke that same sense of wonder? Project Hail Mary was a fun read but felt a bit too in the weeds with the details.
Reminds me quite a bit of Asimov’s “The Last Question”, which mines the same “computer-as-God” vein, is also very short, and has a suspiciously related title. Asimov’s story appeared in 1956, just two years later.
My exact thought process on seeing the title here: "Ah, 'insufficient data for meaningful answer'. No, wait, that one's called 'The Last Question'. So perhaps it's 'There is now'." :-)
(Asimov's is better. Also, the version of this one in my memory is better than the actual story, in that "There is now" is better than the rather clunky equivalent in the story. I suppose it's possible that I'm remembering a different, slightly better written, story with the exact same idea.)
You might call it weak and gimmicky all you want, but it entrenched itself deeply into our collective imagination.
I saw many people come up independently with a direct quote from this story when they saw the IBM promotional image of a man standing in front of an IBM Quantum System One machine.
I think humans are weak and prone to leaping on gimmicks and extrapolating with limited information to wherever their imagination takes them.
If shown a dazzling, mysterious, $10m glass cube draped with all that hyperbolic "quantum future wow!!" marketing, ordinarily smart people will leap to anything. In reality, QC doesn't seem to have a ton of applications yet.
> The post suggests sparkly marketing hooplah wrapping up meager actuality.
I don't think any of those who quoted from this story fell into the marketing hyperbole. We all know these machines are interesting engineering marvels, but far from actually useful at the moment, with the exception of a very narrow set of problems that fall within the narrow capabilities. The people who fell for it probably never heard of this story.
