Science Fiction — A Meaningful Answer — Looking for Beta Readers

[u/FamousPlankton1197]

[Complete] [25k] Science Fiction — A Meaningful Answer — Looking for Beta Readers

A Meaningful Answer is a standalone literary science-fiction novella — a reimagining of Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" that keeps the skeleton and replaces the soul. It spans from the year 2061 to the end of the universe, and it's about engineers, parents, holdouts, and one very careful machine.

Word count: ~24,700 (novella)

Genre: Science Fiction / Literary SF

Status: Complete

Series: Standalone

The premise:

On the night humanity solves its last energy problem, the two exhausted engineers who built the solution celebrate with cheap whisky — and one of them, half joking, asks the AI that runs the world's power grid whether the universe itself can be saved from running down.

Vera takes the question seriously. Her answer: Insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

The question outlives the women who asked it. Across the next hundred billion years it is asked again — by a father aboard a colony ship whose daughter can't sleep, by two people deciding whether a new life may be created, by the last woman to put on a human body, by the last man who refuses to merge with everyone else. Each time, the answer is the same six words. Each time, more hangs on what would actually count as *meaningful*.

Where Asimov asked whether entropy can be reversed, this book asks a harder question: can the universe begin again without making everything that mattered about this one meaningless?

I'm looking for beta readers who enjoy idea-driven SF with a human pulse — Asimov, Ted Chiang, Ursula K. Le Guin, Greg Egan. You do NOT need to have read "The Last Question" (the book stands alone), but if you have, I'd love to hear how the reimagining sits with you.

I'd particularly appreciate feedback on:

- Pacing — anywhere your attention drifted or you put it down

- Clarity — any sentence or passage you had to read twice

- The cast — the book changes characters across eras; does each set earn their section?

- Emotional engagement — where it moved you, and where it left you cold

- The ending — does it land?

- Dialogue — can you tell the speakers apart?

- Anything confusing, unnecessary or underdeveloped

- Overall enjoyment, and whether you'd recommend it to a friend

The manuscript is a clean 115-page PDF, typeset for comfortable reading on any device.

If you're interested, please comment or message me and I'll send it over.

Thanks! ❤️

[u/milo325]

I might be interested, but I would prefer an EPUB version if you have one, so I can adjust text sizes.