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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
challenging
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The central theories that are introduced in this speculative fiction is significant and perspective shifting. However, the pervasiveness of theory tends to impair the story.
Overall a great read.
Overall a great read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore
Честно сказать, сложновато. Приходилось перечитывать некоторые места по несколько раз, чтобы не упустить ничего. Но последнюю главу все равно прочитал по диагонали.
И хотя мне вроде бы удалось ухватить основной концепт, все равно ощущение, что бОльшую часть я не понял.
И хотя мне вроде бы удалось ухватить основной концепт, все равно ощущение, что бОльшую часть я не понял.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT FANTASY LITERATURE
What would you give in exchange for immortality? Greg Egan‘s unabashed answer to that question in Permutation City is simple: Your humanity. Its sounds cliché, but Permutation City is a book that is able to do what only the best science fiction books can: make you think of questions you never knew you had, and imagine futures that seem ever more possible as time passes.
Around the mid-21st century, mind-uploading technology has been perfected, but its use is still limited to those few who can afford it. Moore’s law no longer holds, and computing power is an ever scarcer and costlier commodity, so much so that Copies without the requisite funds to run indefinitely are put on hold until the computing resources become available. Paul Durham has been trying to experiment on Copies of himself to uncover the underlying reality of artificial intelligence, but as soon as his Copies become ‘conscious’ they choose to terminate their own ‘lives’.
Determined to run his experiments, Durham does the unthinkable: He removes from his newest Copy’s software the choice to terminate its own ‘life’. Right away Egan presents us with questions on the issue of granting rights to artificial intelligence. While, as some have argued, Egan doesn’t explicitly dwell on those issues, the fact that we experience the viewpoint of the Copy, which is a perfect computational representation of Durham’s consciousness, gives us the necessary empathy to understand that the difference between a flesh and bone person, and an AI existing in the summation of electron probability clouds inside a computer is only in the materials with which they are made with. In fact that’s one of the themes Egan explores throughout Permutation City, that if human consciousness is capable of being computed, a Copy is as conscious as a person.
In one of the most interesting sequences of the novel, Durham runs the computations of the Copy’s mental states out of temporal order while we see through the Copy’s viewpoint that for itself time continues on as it has always had, illustrating beautifully the idea that subjective experience doesn’t depend on the permutations that give rise to it. It has been 32 years since Egan’s first published novel, so I might just be pointing out what everyone has already found out, but Permutation City has convinced me that Egan possesses immense skill when it comes to translate what would otherwise be abstract subjects into sequences that make clear the underlying complexity. That is not to say that Permutation City won’t sometimes go over your head, as Egan is writing about hard topics and assumes some knowledge of a lot of subject areas, e.g. computational theory, physics, and biology, but it is all presented in a way that is never any harder than it needs to be.
As we jump back and forth in time, we learn that, sometime in the future, Durham is trying to sell to Copies of millionaires who have already died the opportunity to not have to worry about having themselves wiped out from a backlash against Copies. The opportunity to, in essence, live forever. Initially Durham is suspected to be a mere con artist, since what he is selling would require computing power beyond what is currently available on the market, and even the brilliant Maria, whom he hires to work on his project, views Durham as a lunatic.
Incidentally, I found Maria the most interesting character on the whole novel, partly because she shares with the reader the same basic ignorance of what exactly is going on and what Durham’s vision is in a way that allows for our own questions to be asked through her voice. Also, because she is portrayed as an incredibly intelligent person who is normal in every other way, and not a recluse genius incapable of maintaining eye contact and having basic social interactions, which is a trope I’ve grown increasingly tired of.
Maria’s coding contracts have dried up, and her savings have dwindled to a precarious point, yet she can’t keep herself from spending her time and money buying the computational resources to enter the Autoverse, a complex cellular automaton able to simulate crude versions of real world physics and chemistry. Along with a few others, Maria is obsessed with showing that the complex rules of the Autoverse can support natural selection, modifying tiny segments of an artificial lifeform named Autobacterium lamberti in the hopes of obtaining a variation capable of showing signs of adaptation to its outside environment. We see early on Maria succeeding in her efforts, and the excitement her discovery creates inside the tiny circle of people who care about the Autoverse is enough to draw the attention of Durham, who hires Maria to create a seed, a set of initial instructions, which would in time create a world capable of sustaining life, albeit artificial.
Why would Maria agree to undertake such an immense project when both the details surrounding it, and the man who hires her, seem sketchy at best? Here is perhaps the one flaw I could find in the whole novel. Maria’s mother has cancer and refuses to have herself Copied, thinking it unnatural. Refusing to accept her mother’s wishes, Maria decides to earn the money needed to have her mother Copied before it’s too late, and Egan uses this, even though we never see any sort of familial attachment between both characters, to have Maria make decisions that she wouldn’t otherwise have made, advancing the novel’s plot to where it needs to go a bit too conveniently.
Permutation City has become a staple in transhumanistic circles, and it’s easy to see why. While we should be wary of conflating fiction for a serious possibility about the future, it’s hard not to ask oneself, “When are we going to see this coming true?” while reading Permutation City. It’s a serious book playing with interesting concepts, and while some of the questions it raises won’t become relevant for some time, the fact that artificial intelligence is a looming possibility warrants the need to think these questions through. Wholly recommended.
What would you give in exchange for immortality? Greg Egan‘s unabashed answer to that question in Permutation City is simple: Your humanity. Its sounds cliché, but Permutation City is a book that is able to do what only the best science fiction books can: make you think of questions you never knew you had, and imagine futures that seem ever more possible as time passes.
Around the mid-21st century, mind-uploading technology has been perfected, but its use is still limited to those few who can afford it. Moore’s law no longer holds, and computing power is an ever scarcer and costlier commodity, so much so that Copies without the requisite funds to run indefinitely are put on hold until the computing resources become available. Paul Durham has been trying to experiment on Copies of himself to uncover the underlying reality of artificial intelligence, but as soon as his Copies become ‘conscious’ they choose to terminate their own ‘lives’.
Determined to run his experiments, Durham does the unthinkable: He removes from his newest Copy’s software the choice to terminate its own ‘life’. Right away Egan presents us with questions on the issue of granting rights to artificial intelligence. While, as some have argued, Egan doesn’t explicitly dwell on those issues, the fact that we experience the viewpoint of the Copy, which is a perfect computational representation of Durham’s consciousness, gives us the necessary empathy to understand that the difference between a flesh and bone person, and an AI existing in the summation of electron probability clouds inside a computer is only in the materials with which they are made with. In fact that’s one of the themes Egan explores throughout Permutation City, that if human consciousness is capable of being computed, a Copy is as conscious as a person.
In one of the most interesting sequences of the novel, Durham runs the computations of the Copy’s mental states out of temporal order while we see through the Copy’s viewpoint that for itself time continues on as it has always had, illustrating beautifully the idea that subjective experience doesn’t depend on the permutations that give rise to it. It has been 32 years since Egan’s first published novel, so I might just be pointing out what everyone has already found out, but Permutation City has convinced me that Egan possesses immense skill when it comes to translate what would otherwise be abstract subjects into sequences that make clear the underlying complexity. That is not to say that Permutation City won’t sometimes go over your head, as Egan is writing about hard topics and assumes some knowledge of a lot of subject areas, e.g. computational theory, physics, and biology, but it is all presented in a way that is never any harder than it needs to be.
As we jump back and forth in time, we learn that, sometime in the future, Durham is trying to sell to Copies of millionaires who have already died the opportunity to not have to worry about having themselves wiped out from a backlash against Copies. The opportunity to, in essence, live forever. Initially Durham is suspected to be a mere con artist, since what he is selling would require computing power beyond what is currently available on the market, and even the brilliant Maria, whom he hires to work on his project, views Durham as a lunatic.
Incidentally, I found Maria the most interesting character on the whole novel, partly because she shares with the reader the same basic ignorance of what exactly is going on and what Durham’s vision is in a way that allows for our own questions to be asked through her voice. Also, because she is portrayed as an incredibly intelligent person who is normal in every other way, and not a recluse genius incapable of maintaining eye contact and having basic social interactions, which is a trope I’ve grown increasingly tired of.
Maria’s coding contracts have dried up, and her savings have dwindled to a precarious point, yet she can’t keep herself from spending her time and money buying the computational resources to enter the Autoverse, a complex cellular automaton able to simulate crude versions of real world physics and chemistry. Along with a few others, Maria is obsessed with showing that the complex rules of the Autoverse can support natural selection, modifying tiny segments of an artificial lifeform named Autobacterium lamberti in the hopes of obtaining a variation capable of showing signs of adaptation to its outside environment. We see early on Maria succeeding in her efforts, and the excitement her discovery creates inside the tiny circle of people who care about the Autoverse is enough to draw the attention of Durham, who hires Maria to create a seed, a set of initial instructions, which would in time create a world capable of sustaining life, albeit artificial.
Why would Maria agree to undertake such an immense project when both the details surrounding it, and the man who hires her, seem sketchy at best? Here is perhaps the one flaw I could find in the whole novel. Maria’s mother has cancer and refuses to have herself Copied, thinking it unnatural. Refusing to accept her mother’s wishes, Maria decides to earn the money needed to have her mother Copied before it’s too late, and Egan uses this, even though we never see any sort of familial attachment between both characters, to have Maria make decisions that she wouldn’t otherwise have made, advancing the novel’s plot to where it needs to go a bit too conveniently.
Permutation City has become a staple in transhumanistic circles, and it’s easy to see why. While we should be wary of conflating fiction for a serious possibility about the future, it’s hard not to ask oneself, “When are we going to see this coming true?” while reading Permutation City. It’s a serious book playing with interesting concepts, and while some of the questions it raises won’t become relevant for some time, the fact that artificial intelligence is a looming possibility warrants the need to think these questions through. Wholly recommended.
3.5 stars, weird one. Greg continues to play with the rules of perception and what perceiving a thing implies, only this time we go on a trippy trip to parallel universe central, launching of parallel universes as we go, dropping through thousands of years and more, and "failing" (in one universe, and what's one universe) in the end because the aliens we created have a more solid and cohesive perception of reality than we do. I just felt the whole time that Greg made all the rules fairly arbitrarily and could change them whatever way he wanted at any time. Which may have been due to me not understanding the premise deeply enough (and is a feeling shared by Maria, one of the two protagonists, at least).
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No