Permutation City

Consider that downloading your consciousness into a computer was possible. That means you could live forever, as long as somebody maintained that computer. Now imagine that a rich guy employed a software developer to write a software package that was self-preserving and could not be destroyed because it was deployed across some vast system, and in that package were various levels of habitat for downloads to live. Forever is now becoming more of a possibility.

Welcome to Permutation City. What could possibly go wrong?

Wow this book blew me away, and it came out in 1995? It would feel ahead of its time if it came out today. One of the best sci fi I have read in years.

This is undoubtedly one of the best books I have ever read. One of the knockdown Christian arguments for the existence of god is that of the first mover; as it goes “effect requires cause / since the universe is in motion, it must have had a cause / therefore god.” Of course, this argument merely passes the buck — if the universe can't be started in motion, why can god? What was his mover? Permutation City is what happens when you bite the bullet and take that question seriously.

This book follows a computer-simulated psychonaut in his quest to understand the nature of consciousness and reality. Egan really takes his time exploring the consequences of being able to make simulated copies of humans — for example, what happens if you run their subjective experience backwards? Or if you remove a haunting memory? Are two indistinguishable copies the same person? Amazingly, every result here is both coherent and interesting, and I found myself pausing every few pages to think deeply about the consequences of some aspect of Permutation City's reality. Egan is a mathematician, and it shows.

Go read this book. If you appreciate hard science fiction and remarkably good world-building, you will love it.

Yeah, good scientific speculations, some very good philosophical dilemmas, but no story, no tension or action, no characters (just names talking to each other, but with nothing to set them apart as personalities), lame and dry writing... in short, extremely boring. I actually “did not like it”, the extra star is for the speculations I thought myself because of it.

Boo. I stopped this book about a quarter of the way in. Story still hadn't created any fundamental tension. Just hard work. Very disappointing.

In der mitte des 21. Jahrhunderts werden die Nervenverbindungen von Menschen gescannt und im Computer wiederbelebt. Diese sogenannten 'Copys' leben nach dem Tod ihrer Schaffer weiter, verwalten ihr Guthaben, gehen ihrem Job nach, alles mit einer Verlangsamungsrate von 17 in relation zur Echtzeit. Paul Durham springt zwischen virtual reality und echten leben und entwickelt die 'dust theory'. Muster sind im Chaos enthalten und werden weiterbestehen, auch wenn die kontrollierende software abgeschalten wird. Er kreiert eine neue Welt und bietet der Elite der Copies die Möglichkeit der Untersterblichkeit an. Permutation City entsteht und funktioniert als unbegrenzter Cellular Automata. Zeit wird relativ, da kein Kontakt zur biologischen Welt mehr besteht. Kuenstliches Leben wird gezuechtet und bedroht am Ende die Regeln von Permutation City, durch den Aufeinanderprall von zwei verschiedenen Weltansichten in einer undefinierbaren Welt.