I read this first story over twenty years ago, but I hope someone has a better memory than I do. This may be a short short story, a little 2 page zinger ala Asimov, but I’ve never run across it in any collection of his.
It is about an attempt to build a giant computer, one with all the collected wisdom of humanity–perhaps aliens as well, I seem to remember that other planets were populated, but I can remember if they were humans or aliens. Anyway, they build this computer out in space and feed it all the info, they hook everything into the computer–weapons, economic safeguards, the powergrid, etc. so it runs everything (a common thread in early 70’s sci-fi). A scientist or a politician is selected to ask the first question. Another guy, who knows what is going to be asked, starts feeling like this whole thing may be a bad idea, but no one listens to him. The question is “Is there a God?” and the story ends with the computer saying “There is now.”
The second story was published in Omni, I’m almost positive, around the mid-seventies again. The Soviet Union has a bomb that destroys buildings, but not humans; the U.S. had a bomb that kills humans, but leaves the buildings standing. Both sides use their bombs. Big bad news on both sides. The infastructure of the U.S. is in ruins, people are starving, etc., so a migration to the Soviet Union begins–where all the building are just waiting to be occupied and the machinery all still works. Now the Americans who travel to Russia insist that they will remain Americans, America is being transferred to the Russian soil, but that’s not what happens. They have to learn Russian to get the machines working, and the climate is different that in the U.S, so they have to work the land differently, and their aren’t many of them, so women and men do the same work, etc. By the end of the story, the land itself–Mother Russia–has turned the Americans into Russians–not Soviets, Russians. And you get the feeling that if the opposite had happened, Russians had come to U.S. soil, the same thing would have happened to them.
Okay, so both of the stories (and they are both better than my synopses) are realitively heavy-handed “message” tales, but the 70’s were like that. And they made an impression–I’ve remembered them for over twenty years. But I’d love to re-read them, to see if it was just my teen-age enthusiasm, or if these stories have some merit. Any help?