Robert Sheckley 17 min read

A machine built to answer any question at all turns out to have one catch: you have to know how to ask.

Robert Sheckley's 1953 story introduces Answerer, an ancient device that holds the ultimate revelations, if only the seekers who find it could frame their questions well enough to receive them. A witty, profound classic about the limits of knowledge and inquiry. Read it for one of Sheckley's sharpest and most-quoted parables, funny and genuinely wise.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

17 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).