Years ago I read a sci-fi book whose name I didn't recall. There were only three things I rembered about the book: 1) A group of people upload themselves into a virtual world. 2) A woman who was a software and chemical engineer, tinkering with a molecular simulation environment, sees her creation evolve into actual life. 3) One of the virtual characters would alter his perception of time while climbing an infinitely tall sky scraper, so he could do it for seconds or for years, and not know the difference and never get bored.
So a few weeks ago my son comes to me and says he's reading this book called Permutation City and it has some crazy concepts. There were ideas of insect life evolving in a simulation. There was this dust theory that could lead to nearly unlimited compute power and storage for a massive virtual simulations. Everything my son mentioned sounded more and more familiar until I realized... I promised him I'd re-read the book so we can chat about it. We've since had a couple interesting chats about what it could all mean :)
Greg Egan's writing is not graceful or artistic, his cover art looks low-budget, and the sci-fi ideas in this book on the surface are fairly ordinary. I think those are the reasons I didn't remember it. But these sci-fi ideas are actually intriguing and insightful, and they're explained in impressive depth.
I've since learned there's a whole treasure trove of Greg Egan books. All with crappy cover art, but every synopsis I've read makes me think I may have found my next favorite author of hard science fiction. It's like I've discovered a trail of gems!
So a few weeks ago my son comes to me and says he's reading this book called Permutation City and it has some crazy concepts. There were ideas of insect life evolving in a simulation. There was this dust theory that could lead to nearly unlimited compute power and storage for a massive virtual simulations. Everything my son mentioned sounded more and more familiar until I realized... I promised him I'd re-read the book so we can chat about it. We've since had a couple interesting chats about what it could all mean :)
Greg Egan's writing is not graceful or artistic, his cover art looks low-budget, and the sci-fi ideas in this book on the surface are fairly ordinary. I think those are the reasons I didn't remember it. But these sci-fi ideas are actually intriguing and insightful, and they're explained in impressive depth.
I've since learned there's a whole treasure trove of Greg Egan books. All with crappy cover art, but every synopsis I've read makes me think I may have found my next favorite author of hard science fiction. It's like I've discovered a trail of gems!