Tenn, “The Liberation of Earth”; Asimov, “The Last Question”
ENG 108 · Lecture 8
Erik Fredner
Oregon State University
Tue Oct 20, 2026
Adapted from course materials by Evan Gottlieb.
Quiz 7
Midterm reminder
- Midterm is this Thursday
- Bring your computer
- It will be administered on Canvas in person
- It’s scheduled to take the entire class period
- Approximately 50 multiple choice questions, plus three short answer questions of approximately 2 paragraphs each
- Arrive a few minutes early if possible so you can have the full time
- Questions?
Sample passage identification question
Each passage comes from a text we have read. Choose the text it comes from.
Well, nothing in particular, the aliens replied with some embarrassment. … [F]or the moment, if we would concentrate on not getting in their way when they serviced their gun-mounts, they would be very grateful, really…
- Wells, “The Star”
- Stone, “The Conquest of Gola”
- Tenn, “The Liberation of Earth”
- Asimov, “The Last Question”
Questions for today
- What is satire?
- How do we know Tenn is writing satirically?
- Whose side is Tenn on?
- What does “The Last Question” have in common with “Goldilocks and the Three Bears?”
- What is future history?
- What is entropy, and what makes SF “hard”?
- Why does Asimov allude to the Bible?
What is satire?
- Satire ridicules a target to expose its folly or hypocrisy
- In works of fiction, the target is usually something outside of the story
- Recent-ish examples
- Film: Don’t Look Up, Get Out, Idiocracy
- TV: The White Lotus, Veep, Atlanta
How do we know this headline from The Onion is satirical?
- “Man Who Shot Iraqi Civilian To Death In Front Of Family Given 10% Discount On Popcorn”
- How does the text tells us it is satire?
- How do we know what it is satirizing?
William Tenn (1920–2010)
- Pen name of Philip Klass, who was born in London and raised in Brooklyn
- Served in the Second World War
- Mostly short stories, many of them satirical
- “The Liberation of Earth”: Future Science Fiction, May 1953, during the Korean War
How do we know that Tenn is writing satirically?
“The Liberation of Earth” doesn’t tell you that it’s satire explicitly. So how does it tell you implicitly?
Liberation over and over and over
| liberation | by | cost |
|---|---|---|
| the first | Dendi | Washington, for a “recreation-hall”; one-tenth of humanity, killed by the Dendi’s own weapons |
| the Second Liberation | Troxxt | the workers who “sickened and died, in scrabbling hordes,” in Troxxt mines and weapons works |
| the First Reliberation | Dendi | Venus and Australia |
| the Second Reliberation | Troxxt | “a tremendous chunk” of the northern hemisphere |
| the Re-Reliberation | Dendi | Earth left “pear-shaped” |
- Repetition enhances absurdity
- “Liberation” is not recognizable as liberation by the end
- The first liberators kill a tenth of humanity while defending it
Making the serious ridiculous (Bathos)
“Altogether a disagreeable way for one-tenth of the human race to die.”
“Why, killing was almost too good for them, the Dendi murmured as they killed them.”
“playing ice-hockey, televising, smashing atoms, red-baiting, conducting giveaway shows and signing affidavits”
Connections to the headlines of 1953
| in the story | in the reader’s world |
|---|---|
| “Any lendi, Dendi?” | children begging American soldiers for gum |
| “Platinum Scrap for Procyon” | wartime scrap drives |
| “Safe for Democracy” | Woodrow Wilson, 1917: “The world must be made safe for democracy.” |
| G-J Day | V-E Day, V-J Day |
| “Traitors to Protoplasm” | show trials |
Why satire and SF work together
- Both estrange: they make the familiar look contingent.1
- Both extend reality: SF extrapolates. Satire exaggerates.
- Satire and SF have a long history together (e.g., Gulliver’s Travels (1726))
Whose side is Tenn on?
- Satire works because it takes a stance against something.
- e.g., The Onion headline critiques the gap between how US soldiers are publicly recognized, and what they have to do to earn that recognition
- What does “The Liberation of Earth” stand against?
- And what does it stand for?
Dendi and Troxxt in 1953
| Dendi | Troxxt |
|---|---|
| arrive first, over France | land in the Ukraine |
| hand out lendi | “educate” their captives |
| “for the sake of civilization itself” | “a true democracy of species” |
| are the Galactic Federation | champion the Protoplasmic League |
- If Dendi and Troxxt are the US and the USSR, then Earth is Korea.
- But it’s not clear who’s who as in an allegory, since each side’s propaganda is nearly the same.
Satire says “no”
- Satire says that something about the world is wicked: hypocritical, immoral, vain, etc.
- “The Liberation of Earth” questions the motives of stronger nations who claim to fight for weaker ones, but only in so far as it advances their interests, not as a matter of principle
- Satire does not necessarily say what to do about a wicked world
- It can be nihilistic. But it can also be moralistic.
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)
- Born in Russia; raised in Brooklyn
- PhD in chemistry; taught biochemistry at Boston University
- I, Robot, the Foundation series, hundreds of other books
- “The Last Question” (1956) was his favorite short story
How is the narrative of “The Last Question” structured?
A fairy-tale pattern
- Repetition with variation
- e.g., Goldilocks tries three different bowls, three different chairs, three different beds, until one is “just right”
- Speculative fiction connection at the level of structure
The same scene, repeated with variations
| who asks | why | the computer |
|---|---|---|
| Adell and Lupov | a five-dollar bet | Multivac: “miles and miles of face” |
| Jerrodd | to quiet his daughters | Microvac: “as long as the ship” |
| VJ-23X and MQ-17J | a report | Galactic AC: “a thousand feet across” |
| Zee Prime | the stars are dying | Universal AC: “two feet across” |
| Man | “The Universe is dying.” | Cosmic AC: “neither matter nor energy” |
Eventually, each computer designs its successor. Humans keep coming back to the same question.
The refrain
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
But then:
LET THERE BE LIGHT!
What are future histories?
- Stories in which the future (relative to the reader) is presented as if it were in the narrator’s past.
- “The Last Question” fits one into a short story: 2061 to the end of recorded time (and presumably a new Big Bang)
Are future histories utopias/dystopias?
- Not necessarily, but they can be.
- Brave New World (1932) has elements of both
- Often, utopia/dystopia is presented and explored after it has been established, and its history is not considered systematically
- e.g., The Hunger Games does not present the full history of what happened between the present-day United States and the novel’s Panem
Every “solution” creates the next problem because the universe is finite
| solution | next problem |
|---|---|
| free sunpower | “a sun won’t last forever” |
| interstellar travel | “X-23 will be overcrowded” |
| immortality | “it has undone all its other solutions” |
- Jevons paradox: more efficient energy use leads to more energy use
- Malthus: population “increases in a geometrical ratio,” faster than the resources that sustain it2
- Asimov echoes Malthus: “Our energy requirements are going up in a geometric progression even faster than our population.”
Entropy
- The second law of thermodynamics: Not all heat can be converted into work in a cyclic process
- In an isolated system, entropy never decreases. As Asimov’s characters keep saying, “Entropy must increase.”
- Its end point is heat death. No usable energy means nothing more can happen.
Is “The Last Question” more utopian or dystopian?
What makes SF “hard”?
- Term coined by P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding, 1957.
- Hard SF keeps its novum consistent with known science, especially the “hard sciences” (hence the name)
- Distinguished from “soft” science fiction, which may focus on the “soft sciences” (e.g., sociology), or be less concerned with accurate scientific extrapolation.
Does Asimov’s ending betray hard SF?
“The Last Question” honors the second law of thermodynamics for ten trillion years of future history. Does it finally break it?
Allusion
- Quotation reproduces a source’s words directly.
- Allusion gestures to a source with a partial quote or echo and counts on the reader to recognize it.
- e.g., Contemporary allusions to the “red pill” from The Matrix
- In literature, allusions are often made to canonical texts.
- In English, the Bible and Shakespeare are the most common sources of allusions.
“Let there be light”
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.3
The consciousness of AC … brooded over what was now Chaos. … And AC said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light—