This chapter presents the story of successive generations of Multivacs, self‐improving superintelligent computers that serve as the custodians of humanity. The first part of the chapter ends with a question posed to the Multivac that whether mankind, one day, without the net expenditure of energy, be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age. Some moments later, the computer replies that it is unable to provide an answer due to insufficient data. (...) This answer is repeated for other questions too by other computers, each more improved than the earlier one. The questions include whether stars, being power units, can be made to start again once their power drains out, whether entropy can be reversed, and whether stars could be kept from dying. (shrink)

Twenty-six essays probe the phenomena of the universe that have shaped and will shape the future of man from the development of multicellular life to twenty possible ways the world could end.

This chapter presents a conversation between two women, one old, and the other a young robopsychologist. The talk is about looking for positronic brain pattern in a computer. Then, their conversation is joined by a robot, and veers towards robotic dreams. The robot sees a see a large panorama in its dream in which many other robots are working. Some of them are mining in the depths of the Earth, some laboring in heat and radiation, and some in factories and (...) some undersea. The robots are bowed down with toil and affliction, and all are weary of responsibility and care, although in reality they do not need any rest. (shrink)