Robert Sheckley

“ Morran asked. Lingman's eyes remained closed. His taloned fingers were clenched, his cheeks sunk further in. The skull was emerging.
"Sir! Sir!"
And Answerer knew that that was not the answer.
lone on his planet, which is neither large nor small, but exactly the right size, Answerer waits. He cannot help the people who come to him, for even Answerer has restrictions.
He can answer only valid questions.
Universe? Life? Death? Purple? Eighteen?
Partial truths, half-truths, little bits of the great question. ”

“ Morran said. "The answer to everything!" A physicist, Morran had many questions to ask Answerer. The expanding universe; the binding force of atomic nuclei; novae and supernovae; planetary formation; red shift, relativity and a thousand others.
"Yes," Lingman said. He pulled himself to the vision plate and looked out on the bleak prairie of the illusory sub-space. He was a biologist and an old man. He had two questions.
What is life?
What is death?
fter a particularly-long period of hunting purple, Lek and his friends gathered to talk. ”

“ Answerer said. He knew what purple actually was, and what the mound was for. But the explanation was concealed in a greater explanation. Without this, Lek's question was inexplicable, and Lek had failed to ask the real question.
Lek asked other questions, and Answerer was unable to answer them. Lek viewed things through his specialized eyes, extracted a part of the truth and refused to see more. How to tell a blind man the sensation of green? ”

“ It's well established now that the way you put a question often determines not only the answer you'll get, but the type of answer possible. So ... a mechanical answerer, geared to produce the ultimate revelations in reference to anything you want to know, might have unsuspected limitations.
Ask A Foolish Question
by ROBERT SHECKLEY
nswerer was built to last as long as was necessary—which was quite long, as some races judge time, and not long at all, according to others. ”