BotM: "Permutation City" by Greg Egan

[Richard]

According to the blurb...

In the not-too-distant future, technology has given birth to immortality. The human mind can be scanned and downloaded into a virtual reality program to become a perfect electronic "Copy", aware of itself. The bad news is, someone has blocked the bail-out option that allows a Copy, by law, to return to flash-and-blood life.

So Egan — like Altered Carbon's Morgan — thinks we're gonna become software at some point in the future.

And the book won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel back in 1995, so it should be a good read.

[Richard]

Okay, looking at what members thought, I'm seeing some five-star ratings and some three-star ratings. But I'm one-third the way through and struggling.

Curious: at the same time, I'm quite intrigued by where Egan is going to take this, but I having trouble wanting to come back to the book after I put it down for a break.

Does the action or tension ramp up, or is this all an intellectual exercise?

[David]

I'm 3/4 thru the book. The subplots get woven together. But so far, the strength is in the speculative ideas, not in other literary areas. The story / plot / character activity would probably fill a novelette or novella if most of the science speculation was removed. Fascinating speculation, though.

[Maciej]

Not a bad book, Egan's works are about ideas primarily and yes, PC is more of intellectual exercise. If you seek for something more action-packed though then I recommend Quarantine. And if you like Egan then the absolutely brilliant short stories collection Axiomatic is a must.
Currently I'm waiting for Polish edition of Diaspora. I cannot believe I haven't read it yet (too scared of not coping with science language in English version).

[Larry]

Permutation City Hard SF? I thougnt it was cyber punk?

[Richard]

I had been told it was hard-scifi, but I stripped that tag off of it. It is definitely "hard" in the difficult sense, and very techie-oriented (which is often conflated with hard SF), but I think the major theme wasn't consistent with current or projected scientific trends.

Cyberpunk, on the other hand? No: the whole mood of anarchy that goes along with that was missing.

It was certainly Singularity oriented, in spite of the lack of a dominating AI. Amplification of humans to trans-human status also qualifies.

But close enough to hard sf that it works well with this group. At least as hard as Consider Phlebas, for example.

[Larry]

Hmmm I'm sure I've tried to read this in the past and failed! I dont know what it is about this author,his books seem either difficult like this one or boring like Teranesia

[Username, SF Techgod]

To me, Permutation City provides all I'm looking for in hard SF. Rigorous scientific ideas, extrapolated to their ultimate consequences, regardless how weird they may get :-)
I admit it is sometimes difficult to follow Egan, but I appreciate that he doesn't feel constrained to dumb down his ideas to get readers. I don't know of any other author like him in this.