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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
Seeking immortality from uploading minds in silico. Good straight-up speculative science fiction.
There are some essential conversations about the meaning of death that is missing from the first half of the book that would nag me until it all became irrelevant by the end. A great idea book best enjoyed by meditating on how the characters don't really matter.
Greg Egan has a brilliant imagination and a strong understanding of the science behind the subject matter of his books (or at least he is very good at faking it).
I had read enough reviews to come into this book knowing what to expect: a mind-blowingly cool idea with good execution and plausible science. For the most part, I thought this book delivered. Permutation City explores life and consciousness in ways that could make you question your reality. Presented within are two different sorts of simulated universes, available of course only to the extremely wealthy in this not-so-distant future society.
The first type of simulation is a simple approximation of reality: a world rendered in a virtual reality landscape, computing only what is observed by its inhabitants and faking the rules of physics so things look somewhat convincing. Users' brains are scanned and uploaded into this world, and they inhabit "bodies" that they can design to their liking. Any people other than those scanned are simply scripts that follow a preset routine, designed to make the world look populated but which do not possess the means for significant interaction. In this world, people "live" knowing fully that they are in a simulation and have complete control over their world and whether they continue to exist within it.
(~~~~ begin spoilers ~~~~)
The second type of simulated reality is developed later on in the novel, but raises some very intriguing questions as to what really constitutes reality. In the story, a handful of hobbyists enjoy playing around in what is known as The Autoverse, a sophisticated cellular automata "universe" that is capable of modeling atoms which behave similar to those in our universe, but nothing at the quantum level below that. The system was developed to study chemical interactions and the simplest forms of life. Despite being written off as a toy, a character finds herself attempting to recreate the early conditions for life on an Earth-like "planet" with the idea that she could prove that life can evolve and exist within The Autoverse. Of course, she succeeds, and the characters are left with a decision to make contact with a wildly new form of intelligent life that does not know it exists inside a simulation, because to it, the rules of its universe are entirely logical and consistent. Or are they really?
(~~~~ end spoilers ~~~~)
Greg Egan poses these questions quite elegantly and leaves the reader plenty of room for their own thought and interpretation. I enjoy these types of stories very much. Where I thought this story fell short was in the characterization and the explanation of the concepts.
Many of the characters felt somewhat flat and fairly similar, and although they had decent backstories, their depth felt unconvincing and underutilized. A couple characters had several chapters of development, only to contribute very little to the overall plot. I kept wishing these chapters would end quickly so the story would come back to following the main two characters, who kept things moving quite well.
To contrast Permutation City with the earlier works of Neal Stevenson, another well regarded hard-sci-fi author, Greg Egan spends very little time explaining the scientific concepts that drive a large part of the subject matter of the book. There were parts where I felt the only way I could continue to follow the story is because I have studied this subject matter on my own time in the past, and found it personally fascinating. I wished in some places that Egan would adopt a more Stevenson-like style and spend a little time explaining the rules and ideas that drove his story.
Overall, Permutation City is a fascinating look at artificial reality, simulated universes, and the nature of perception. Despite its age, the science holds up quite well, as do many of his predictions of future society. Folks interested in the current debate over the simulated universe theory would do themselves a favor to read this novel for both a good bit of entertainment and a fairly plausible look at how this might realistically (or not) be achieved.
I had read enough reviews to come into this book knowing what to expect: a mind-blowingly cool idea with good execution and plausible science. For the most part, I thought this book delivered. Permutation City explores life and consciousness in ways that could make you question your reality. Presented within are two different sorts of simulated universes, available of course only to the extremely wealthy in this not-so-distant future society.
The first type of simulation is a simple approximation of reality: a world rendered in a virtual reality landscape, computing only what is observed by its inhabitants and faking the rules of physics so things look somewhat convincing. Users' brains are scanned and uploaded into this world, and they inhabit "bodies" that they can design to their liking. Any people other than those scanned are simply scripts that follow a preset routine, designed to make the world look populated but which do not possess the means for significant interaction. In this world, people "live" knowing fully that they are in a simulation and have complete control over their world and whether they continue to exist within it.
(~~~~ begin spoilers ~~~~)
The second type of simulated reality is developed later on in the novel, but raises some very intriguing questions as to what really constitutes reality. In the story, a handful of hobbyists enjoy playing around in what is known as The Autoverse, a sophisticated cellular automata "universe" that is capable of modeling atoms which behave similar to those in our universe, but nothing at the quantum level below that. The system was developed to study chemical interactions and the simplest forms of life. Despite being written off as a toy, a character finds herself attempting to recreate the early conditions for life on an Earth-like "planet" with the idea that she could prove that life can evolve and exist within The Autoverse. Of course, she succeeds, and the characters are left with a decision to make contact with a wildly new form of intelligent life that does not know it exists inside a simulation, because to it, the rules of its universe are entirely logical and consistent. Or are they really?
(~~~~ end spoilers ~~~~)
Greg Egan poses these questions quite elegantly and leaves the reader plenty of room for their own thought and interpretation. I enjoy these types of stories very much. Where I thought this story fell short was in the characterization and the explanation of the concepts.
Many of the characters felt somewhat flat and fairly similar, and although they had decent backstories, their depth felt unconvincing and underutilized. A couple characters had several chapters of development, only to contribute very little to the overall plot. I kept wishing these chapters would end quickly so the story would come back to following the main two characters, who kept things moving quite well.
To contrast Permutation City with the earlier works of Neal Stevenson, another well regarded hard-sci-fi author, Greg Egan spends very little time explaining the scientific concepts that drive a large part of the subject matter of the book. There were parts where I felt the only way I could continue to follow the story is because I have studied this subject matter on my own time in the past, and found it personally fascinating. I wished in some places that Egan would adopt a more Stevenson-like style and spend a little time explaining the rules and ideas that drove his story.
Overall, Permutation City is a fascinating look at artificial reality, simulated universes, and the nature of perception. Despite its age, the science holds up quite well, as do many of his predictions of future society. Folks interested in the current debate over the simulated universe theory would do themselves a favor to read this novel for both a good bit of entertainment and a fairly plausible look at how this might realistically (or not) be achieved.
This was actually fun to read, once you get used to Greg Egan's style of characterization (the characters are all highly intelligent and almost, but not quite, emotionless, when compared to the average novel character). The main entertainment in Greg Egan's stories is always the plot, really, not so much the characters. Every once in awhile, something interesting happens character-wise, but their interactions aren't really central to the plot. Basically, in this novel, he takes the ideas of cellular automata and an interesting idea about gods and how humanity relates to them and runs with it in several directions. It's fun, as long as you don't take it too seriously.
Spoiler
In detail, he expands a few arguments out to chapter and book length. In particular, most "real-world" events are results of extremely complicated series of choices made by conscious beings. However, we choose the artificial "Occam's Razor" to gauge credibility of physical theories, eschewing consciousness from the beginning. What consequences could that choice have in a universe where reality does not conform to that artificial choice? If a modeling language is so internally consistent that it could model anything, can we know when the model has departed from "reality"? When does reality start to conform to the model instead of the other way around? Some nice philosophy questions expanded to dramatic book length.
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Cards on the table: I LOVE Egan's style of "science first, plot later" writing. If, IF, an author can truly weave with physics, mathematics, psychology, and computer science...my heart is theirs. Egan has that power. His plots are even good! But if they weren't I wouldn't care, because he writes WITH science like no one else I know. Bless him.
That's really all you need to know.
Note: I think it's funny how Egan uses a similar plot arch here as in some other of his books. Basically, there is a major plot item—a last boss if you will. You learn about it ~1/4th through the book. Most writers would then devote the last 60 pages to a narrative "boss fight". Egan moves the goal post—60% through, the boss is already dead, but there is another world inside the boss, and that world has a boss. It's actually really fun, because the reader enjoys +2 major climaxes, >1 of this is in an unexpectedly early phase of the book.
That's really all you need to know.
Note: I think it's funny how Egan uses a similar plot arch here as in some other of his books. Basically, there is a major plot item—a last boss if you will. You learn about it ~1/4th through the book. Most writers would then devote the last 60 pages to a narrative "boss fight". Egan moves the goal post—60% through, the boss is already dead, but there is another world inside the boss, and that world has a boss. It's actually really fun, because the reader enjoys +2 major climaxes, >1 of this is in an unexpectedly early phase of the book.
I don't write reviews often, and this one will be brief but this book is not only amazingly good it's also the most thought provoking novel I've ever read. It was written in the 90's but could have come straight out of today's world of breakneck AI advancement.
Permutation City really makes you think about what it means to be a conscious being and how our minds determine the reality around us.
Read this book, it's crazy good!
Permutation City really makes you think about what it means to be a conscious being and how our minds determine the reality around us.
Read this book, it's crazy good!
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated