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355th out of 2,944 books
—
12,412 voters
Permutation City (Subjective Cosmology Cycle #2)
by
Greg Egan
In the not-too-distant future, technology has given birth to a form of immortality. The human mind can be scanned and uploaded into a virtual reality program to become a perfect electronic "Copy", aware of itself. A new Copy finds himself forced to cooperate in scientific experiments with the flesh-and-blood man he was copied from. (From the author of Quarantine.)
Mass Market Paperback, 352 pages
Published
October 1st 1995
by HarperPrism
(first published 1994)
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Permutation City by Greg Egan
I don't read a lot of hard sf because my understanding of science is rudimentary at best, but I do tend to enjoy it when I read one that do not go too far over my head. I feel I only need to understand the basic plot and the characters' motivation, the whys if not the hows of it. If those conditions are met then my patchy understanding of the scientific details is not too much of an impediment and the bits that get through to me tend to be quite fascinating.
So it is...more
I don't read a lot of hard sf because my understanding of science is rudimentary at best, but I do tend to enjoy it when I read one that do not go too far over my head. I feel I only need to understand the basic plot and the characters' motivation, the whys if not the hows of it. If those conditions are met then my patchy understanding of the scientific details is not too much of an impediment and the bits that get through to me tend to be quite fascinating.
So it is...more
May 18, 2007
Peter Gerdes
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Geeks and Philosophers
Shelves:
thought_provoking,
scifi
This was my first introduction to Greg Egan and it blew my mind. Permutation City was the first book I ever read that made me say, 'Wow, that's a really interesting argument.' Other books made me think, 'huh, maybe we will have jet blaster space rays in the future.' but this one presents a serious and troubling philosophical argument. Permutation City isn't as fast paced or as idea dense as some of his other works but the ideas are much bigger and more provocative.
Egan is often criticized for l...more
Egan is often criticized for l...more
The interesting part of the book wasn’t “the story,” but the thought exploration on the singularity that is weaved into the story. One might initially think that if and when we reach a point where technology allows us to scan ourselves and download our copy into a virtual reality program, Nirvana and immortality will be ours. Think again. Part 1 of this book postulates a future world where such technology is there, but Nirvana isn’t. Instead, there are physical and financial limitations. Scannin...more
Technology has progressed and it's now possible to live inside a virtual world as a 'Copy' of yourself. The technology is still very expensive, particularly for the computing requirements to run at near real time.
Most Copies run at a fraction of real-time speed, since computing power is lagging behind demand, and prices aren't falling as predicted. The slower speed leaves them lagging behind people in the real world, living as second class citizens. However, there are very many advantages too, i...more
Most Copies run at a fraction of real-time speed, since computing power is lagging behind demand, and prices aren't falling as predicted. The slower speed leaves them lagging behind people in the real world, living as second class citizens. However, there are very many advantages too, i...more
This is amazing book, Greg Egan, is one of those rare authors that combine solid science fiction research with the fabulous. It is pretty much my bible on what can be achieved through science.
So it goes like this. In the future people when they die can map their brains into a computer and live on in virtual reality , normally only wealthy people with the funds to secure processing power after they die, but every year a handful of terminally ill children are also scanned into , to give these "cop...more
So it goes like this. In the future people when they die can map their brains into a computer and live on in virtual reality , normally only wealthy people with the funds to secure processing power after they die, but every year a handful of terminally ill children are also scanned into , to give these "cop...more
This novel written in 1992 is bubbling with ideas and futuristic concepts: artificial life, simulated reality, mind uploading, digital immortality in a world dominated by inequalities, with a substantially chaotic nature. A world far from optimization.
The driving forces of the next future will be first disruptive technologies with exponential growth. In this context, future studies, pressure on quality of life and careful planning can guide safely the change and improve greatly the overall situa...more
The driving forces of the next future will be first disruptive technologies with exponential growth. In this context, future studies, pressure on quality of life and careful planning can guide safely the change and improve greatly the overall situa...more
Rereading this book 15 years later reminds me why I still bother reading Egan's books, despite very lukewarm experiences like his more recent Zendegi. Why hasn't this been reprinted?
This book crackles and hums with ideas that are not just brilliant within their own context, but ask deep questions about our existence. The extrapolation of these ideas is solid and well meshed with the unique and intriguing plot.
Egan is at the top of his form here, banging out compelling world building characteriza...more
This book crackles and hums with ideas that are not just brilliant within their own context, but ask deep questions about our existence. The extrapolation of these ideas is solid and well meshed with the unique and intriguing plot.
Egan is at the top of his form here, banging out compelling world building characteriza...more
This one came up when Schwern and I were poking around the Wikipedia articles about Conway's Game of Life, and I was like, "You know what, it's been way too long since I just said 'fuck everything' and downed a whole book of potentially dubious quality in a single slurp. _Let's do this._"
I can't really say I'd recommend this one: the dialogue is plain embarrassing in that classically hard-SF-speechifying way, and the characters were forgettable ciphers. The plot didn't lock together very well,...more
I can't really say I'd recommend this one: the dialogue is plain embarrassing in that classically hard-SF-speechifying way, and the characters were forgettable ciphers. The plot didn't lock together very well,...more
1 like · like · see review
I loved this book - enjoyed it as much as anything I've read in the past 5 years. The story is well written, fast paced, and the two main characters are engaging. But what makes this book great is the premise - Greg Egan explores one of the cooler ideas in recent sf literature.
The book opens in the year 2045. Science has advanced to the point that the very wealthy can have digital copies of themselves made. The story opens with one of the main characters, Paul Durham, performing an experiment t...more
The book opens in the year 2045. Science has advanced to the point that the very wealthy can have digital copies of themselves made. The story opens with one of the main characters, Paul Durham, performing an experiment t...more
I have this awesome string of random bits that I'm hiding in my pocket. It is a magical fairy land with dragons and wizards and lots of attractive princesses that need saving. What do you mean that's just pocket lint? It's all information! I can interpret it however I want. There's so much pocket lint in the world surely some of it is actually Narnia. In my pocket lint universe I am an immortal god! My name is only spoken in awed pocket lint whispers. What do you mean pocket lint immortal god Me...more
Egan writes sci-fi, heavy on the sci. It’s what sci-fi was meant to be: a tale that takes a scientific idea and leads the imagination, wide-eyed, past the event horizon. The protagonists of Permutation City are software humans, scanned from fleshly originals, virtually immortal, and fated to craft a purpose for themselves in a world of infinite flexibility. Those who revel in the vertigo of Egan’s world may want to move on to Diaspora next.
This is a tough book to review, and I am torn between 3 and 4 stars. It's full of fascinating ideas and discussion of virtual copies of real humans and the issues they might deal with; it's amazingly forward thinking (especially considering it was written in 1994) and I might have been more blown away had I read it back then instead of now. However the characters are unfortunately very flat and for the most part rather unlikable, and the writing is not particularly exciting. I found myself strug...more
Cosa sono io? I dati? Il processo che li genera? Il rapporto tra i numeri?
Tutto questo messo insieme?
Esattamente dieci anni dopo Neuromante e cinque anni prima di Matrix, si impone questo ricco e visionario romanzo, con una rilettura della realtà virtuale forse troppo complessa, ma che davvero è capace di aprire la mente.
Scenari cyber degni di Gibson e soci, scenografie e paesaggi mastodontici che ricordano un po' Ian M. Banks (Criptosfera è il più simile, ed è proprio dello stesso anno - le mig...more
Tutto questo messo insieme?
Esattamente dieci anni dopo Neuromante e cinque anni prima di Matrix, si impone questo ricco e visionario romanzo, con una rilettura della realtà virtuale forse troppo complessa, ma che davvero è capace di aprire la mente.
Scenari cyber degni di Gibson e soci, scenografie e paesaggi mastodontici che ricordano un po' Ian M. Banks (Criptosfera è il più simile, ed è proprio dello stesso anno - le mig...more
1 like · like · see review
This novel is set in the future where people can make copies of them selves so that they can continue living once their physical bodies have died. The central character is a man who with the help of Maria, creates a city where the copies can never die as a result of system malfunction. This is possible as the new world is not run by machines... It can evolve.
I found some aspects of this book to be fascinating as the exploration of artificial intelligence in this manner leaves us to consider the...more
I found some aspects of this book to be fascinating as the exploration of artificial intelligence in this manner leaves us to consider the...more
Astonishing: In the twenty first century it has become possible to noninvasively scan a human brain and implement the resulting data on a computer: Copies of human beings are alive and well in virtual reality.
Few science fiction writers can run as far with the implications as Greg Egan. Copies are just the premise, and before long we are in much deeper waters as one man begins to question the fundamental nature of reality. It's a magnificent exploration of the true implications of computational
...more
Humanity has gained immortality, by placing perfect
simulations of humans onto a computer chip after they die.
The humans on the chip learn how to create artificial
life. And so on, in an ever-ascending chain of machines.
Prepare to have your mind blown.
simulations of humans onto a computer chip after they die.
The humans on the chip learn how to create artificial
life. And so on, in an ever-ascending chain of machines.
Prepare to have your mind blown.
This was a book club book and, at times, it was the only reason I kept reading this book. Let's just say that what happens to Paul Durham put me off reading the book for a few days. While the book explores interesting ideas about the future of computing, immortality, and self-reinvention, I found the plot less than convincing at points. I did not buy the rationale for what happens to Elysium. Also, I found myself lost at times, trying to keep track of the real people, the copies and the clones....more
This is definitely an ideas book, mostly exploring the issues inherent in porting human brains into computer systems, as well as some interesting "quantum ontology" theories. I don't know whether it was poor writing or just the fundamental mind-blowingness of the latter, but I have to admit that when the core reveal happened at about page 180, I didn't have a clear idea of what had happened. By the time I got to the end, though, there had been enough supporting examples that I was able to go bac...more
One of my favorites books. It explores the metaverse and computational aspects of reality.
This book was written prior to The Matrix, but I find both stories somewhat related. The book explores a near future in wich the main can be copied and 'executed' into a computer. This way, human being achieves some sort of immortality.
The autor explores many aspects of computation, quantum physics, astrophysics and even philosophy, so I find this book really complete not leaving "unexplained aspects" or fe...more
This book was written prior to The Matrix, but I find both stories somewhat related. The book explores a near future in wich the main can be copied and 'executed' into a computer. This way, human being achieves some sort of immortality.
The autor explores many aspects of computation, quantum physics, astrophysics and even philosophy, so I find this book really complete not leaving "unexplained aspects" or fe...more
A very good Greg Egan novel.
Since I finished this book during a bout of insomnia at 4:30am, I have no intention of expending effort on this review.
But I enjoyed it. And for once Egan's storyline, when he introduced the more grand scheme of things, didn't crumble under its own weight. Interesting musings on reality and the ability of consciousness to influence it. What becomes of people when you can reshape your personality and reality at will.
Human downloads. Virtual worlds embedded within virtu...more
Since I finished this book during a bout of insomnia at 4:30am, I have no intention of expending effort on this review.
But I enjoyed it. And for once Egan's storyline, when he introduced the more grand scheme of things, didn't crumble under its own weight. Interesting musings on reality and the ability of consciousness to influence it. What becomes of people when you can reshape your personality and reality at will.
Human downloads. Virtual worlds embedded within virtu...more
One of the best hard science fiction works of modern times, the whole concept of the book goes from the physical to the metaphysical, biological, chemical and philosophical, Permutation City is a serch in a solipsism world to know if there is something more than just the illusion of selfawareness,in a future in which computer power and the complexity sciences have advanced to be able to model complex systems and allowed to create an iterative society of copys living inside computer generated "un...more
The more post-human dreams I have, the more I watnt to actually write some code to implement Knowledge Base-based AI.
I have my thoughts and ideas, but I want to get into the ideas of great minds, such as Greg Egan.
After I read the book I wasn’t disappointed at all, the book is very good indeed.
Both the plot and the its philosophical counterpart — the main idea of the book — were really detalized and interesting to grasp.
The book touches many things that interest any person who thinks about V...more
I have my thoughts and ideas, but I want to get into the ideas of great minds, such as Greg Egan.
After I read the book I wasn’t disappointed at all, the book is very good indeed.
Both the plot and the its philosophical counterpart — the main idea of the book — were really detalized and interesting to grasp.
The book touches many things that interest any person who thinks about V...more
Nov 23, 2011
Angel Ruiz
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
novela,
ciencia-ficción
Otra novela de Greg Egan que me deja con la boca abierta. Sus cosmologías subjetivas y sus ideas acerca de la mente humana no dejan de ser especulaciones metafísicas, pero con sólidos cimientos en las ideas científicas y tecnológicas más avanzadas. No son la trama ni los personajes lo que te atrapa en esta novela, sino las ideas que cada pocas páginas se introducen en tu mente y te hacen preguntarte: ¿quién/que soy yo?, ¿qué/como es el universo? Un autor imprescindible y que, tras haber leído so...more
I'm very, very stingy with my five-star ratings, but had no qualms about giving one to Permutation City. Egan managed to write a story about cellular automata, of all things, which sent chills down my spine. Mind-blowingly wonderful.
Oh, any by the way: the publisher blurb (which makes it sound like a scifi mystery) and the "ten million people on a chip" tagline for this book are not just misleading, but false. (You don't have to read very far to understand why the blurb, at least, is bullshit.)
Oh, any by the way: the publisher blurb (which makes it sound like a scifi mystery) and the "ten million people on a chip" tagline for this book are not just misleading, but false. (You don't have to read very far to understand why the blurb, at least, is bullshit.)
If you love Quantum physics, this should be the book for you, but then again, it might not be. Plot and character definitely take a back seat to all things quantum, but experts find errors in the physics, so this novel may leave no reader satisfied.
The characters are flat--even the real humans. The Copies are latter still. This book doesn't hold a candle to the complex social tapestry Egan invented in Distress; the characters pale in comparison to the richly written people and relationships, and...more
The characters are flat--even the real humans. The Copies are latter still. This book doesn't hold a candle to the complex social tapestry Egan invented in Distress; the characters pale in comparison to the richly written people and relationships, and...more
Intéressant sur le plan intellectuel, mais plutôt personnages et style plutôt froids et donc pas accroché. Une deuxième partie plutôt surprenante, avec un développement inattendu des thèmes de la première, mais qui vient trop tard et que j'ai lue en sautant des paragraphes. Certains personnages me semblent en plus totalement inutiles (Peer et Kate, les "squatteurs" de la cité, Thomas le millionnaire qui finit par régresser totalement). On verra si j'accroche plus à Zendegi, mais pas tout de suit...more
At first, this book looks like any other mid-90s cyberpunk "uploading yourself to a computer" fiction. And, to be honest, my expectations weren't that high. But, of course, Greg Egan always brings it and brings it hard (as in hard sci-fi, get it? hurr hurr). Sure, it gets into quantum computing and the nature of consciousness, identity, and continuity of experience. But then it dives sharply into cosmology, ontology, and all of the very deepest, most fundamental questions. Egan actually provides...more
This book takes some time to absorb, and I'm probably doing it a great injustice by reviewing it so quickly after finishing it (and with such a rushed reading by such an uneducated reader). Greg Egan clearly knows what he's talking about when it comes to theoretical physics, and I certainly don’t, so the main bits of Permutation City intimidated me to a point that I may have taken the book too seriously. Some of the reviews I've read now that I've finished have lead me to believe some irony and...more
1 like · like · see review
I clicked on 4 stars, but rating this isn't so simple. The book is full of fascinating speculation about virtual realty, electronic consciousness, virtual/real distinctions, etc. And done it with real attention to practical considerations. (The "dust" thread may be less convincing.) The speculative ideas are explored at length, which may give a feast to "idea SF" readers. However, between the idea explorations there probably isn't more than a novella worth of story and characters. So each reader...more
Jul 07, 2010
Richard
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Richard by:
John from SFGames, HardSF Group
What a strange book. The author takes a very strange idea (sorry, no spoilers) to a logical conclusion — but that concept requires some long and abstruse discussions that verge on analytic philosophy.
As one of my fellow readers points out, the underlying story would probably barely flesh out a novella. A huge portion of the content here is in the defense of an existentially suspect creation.
This won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, but I think it maybe should h...more
As one of my fellow readers points out, the underlying story would probably barely flesh out a novella. A huge portion of the content here is in the defense of an existentially suspect creation.
This won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, but I think it maybe should h...more
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Greg Egan specialises in hard science fiction stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. Other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion.
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), an...more
More about Greg Egan...
He is a Hugo Award winner (and has been shortlisted for the Hugos three other times), an...more
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updated 19. Juli, 02:20 Uhr
19. Juli, 02:10 Uhr