{"id":5983,"date":"2022-11-24T12:19:03","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T12:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5983"},"modified":"2022-11-24T12:19:07","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T12:19:07","slug":"the-answer-by-fredric-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=5983","title":{"rendered":"<strong><em>The Answer<\/em><\/strong> by Fredric Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>The Answer<\/em><\/strong> by Fredric Brown (<em>Angels and Spaceships<\/em>, 1954) opens with a scientist called Dwar Ev completing a connection and then moving towards a switch:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe\u2014ninety-six billion planets\u2014into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one super-calculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.\u00a0 p. 36<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Ev then asks the super-computer if there is a God, and it replies (spoiler), \u201cYes, <em>now<\/em> there is a God\u201d. Then, when Ev rushes towards the switch to turn the computer off, it zaps him with a lightning bolt.<br>This is one of these squibs (it is less than a page long) that you find (a) pretty neat when you are twelve, but (b) a not very good gimmick story when older. The real sense of wonder here lies in the idea of ninety-six billion inhabited and interconnected planets.<br>* (Mediocre). 250 words. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/angelsspaceships0000fred\/page\/36\/mode\/2up\">Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Answer by Fredric Brown (Angels and Spaceships, 1954) opens with a scientist called Dwar Ev completing a connection and then moving towards a switch: The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe\u2014ninety-six billion planets\u2014into the supercircuit that would connect them [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1378],"tags":[21,246,1379,1380,1377,1371,1022,12],"class_list":["post-5983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fredric-brown","tag-21","tag-246","tag-angels-and-spaceships","tag-computers","tag-fredric-brown","tag-god","tag-short-short","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5983"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5987,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5983\/revisions\/5987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}