John W. Campbell Award Winners

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 25. Chapters: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Rendezvous with Rama, The Postman, Permutation City, Islands in the Net, A Deepness in the Sky, The Time Ships, The Alteration, Timescape, The Book of the New Sun, Riddley Walker, On Wings of Song, Gateway, Forever Peace, Three Californias Trilogy, Market Forces, Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede, The Chronoliths, Beyond Apollo, A Door into Ocean, The Child Garden, Malevil, Lincoln's Dreams. Excerpt: Permutation City is a 1994 science fiction novel by Greg Egan that explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, via various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality. Sections of the story were adapted from Egan's 1992 short story "Dust" which dealt with many of the same philosophical themes. Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year in 1995 and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award that same year. The novel was also cited in a 2003 Scientific American article on multiverses by Max Tegmark. Permutation City asks whether is there a difference between a computer simulation of a person and a "real" person. It focuses on a model of consciousness and reality, the Dust Theory, similar to the Ultimate Ensemble Mathematical Universe hypothesis proposed by Max Tegmark. It uses the assumption that human consciousness is Turing computable: that consciousness can be produced by a computer program. The book deals with consequences of human consciousness being amenable to mathematical manipulation, as well as some consequences of simulated realities. In this way, Egan attempts to deconstruct notions of self, memory, and mortality, and of physical reality. The Autoverse is an artificial life simulator based on a cellular automaton complex enough to represent the substratum of an artificial chemistry. It is...