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Permutation City (1994)

gregegan.net

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Re: Permutation City (1994)

#91

Post by edanm »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #46
cdogl wrote: post #17

Egan is the only great Australian science fiction writer I’m aware of. I principally recommend Diaspora for far future post-human history with a strong focus on physics and maths, and Quarantine which is a sort of heist thriller with a unique quantum physics hook in a relatively near future Northern Australia setting where First Nations people have gained independence and positioned themselves as an Asian financial /…

Big Fan of Egan's short stories. I feel like they are his strongest work and maybe because they can lean more on ideas. Luminous about math grad students discovering some secrets in math is pretty great. Wang's Carpets which became Diaspora is mind blowing. Zendegi is an interesting novel by him I never see anyone mention. I enjoyed it and the characters are a bit more developed. It also has a Eliezer Yudkowsky stand…

I'm a big fan of Egan, having read a few of his books and a bunch of short stories. Personally, Zendegi was the weakest of his books by quite a bit. (Still good, just... not great.)

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#92

Post by prepend »

k__ wrote: post #2

Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.

Completely different style but I think Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan introduces lots of new ideas and interacts with them realistically.

The first season of the show was good but very different than the book.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#94

Post by yencabulator »

Frotag wrote: post #14
k__ wrote: post #2

Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.

Been asking myself the same question for months. So Egan's stories are basically a mathy whodunit -- start from first (fictional) principles and eventually solve some universe-scale question or crisis. His characters are basically walking textbooks meant for info dumping / FAQing the derivations. In that light, some similar stories I've found are... - Dragon's Egg (Robert Forward) - Of Ants and Dinosaurs (Liu Cixin,…

You should try the old master, Hal Clement. Mission of Gravity is a classic "start from first principles" story.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#95

Post by edanm »

mindcrime wrote: post #84

I thought Permutation City was great. One of my favorite sci-fi reads from the last couple of decades. It's probably about time to read it again, as most of the details escape me now. Anyway, I was going to say... I've always thought that folks who enjoyed Permutation City might also enjoy Glasshouse [1] by Charles Stross[2]. The two novels aren't necessarily overtly similar, but I feel like there's a sort of abstrac…

I've long wanted to read Charles Stross and somehow haven't. (Well, I read a few chapters of Accelerando years ago and never finished it, despiting liking it quite a bit.)

Do you think Glasshouse is a good place to start with his writing and is representative of his style? I loved Permutation City, one of my favorite books.

(I would've asked cstross himself but that would seem too awkward!)

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#96

Post by k__ »

gpderetta wrote: post #67
badcppdev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard internet Watts warning that the Rift novels have random sexual torture just in case you prefer to avoid that

Right, yes, especially the last Rifter book made me wonder a bit about the sanity of the author.

I read the acknowledgements in some of his books and found him rather dislikeable.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#98

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

cstross wrote: post #81
alexpotato wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read Accelerando recently and it's great. Hard to believe that it was written in 2005 given the one scene where the main character is walking around generating multiple interlocking crypto contracts to store money for his daughter.

It was published in 2005 -- actually I wrote the 9 novelettes that went into it from 1998-2003 (they were originally published in Asimov's SF magazine from 2002-2004 before I assembled and rewrote them to make the book).

Blew my mind in the best way. Thank you.

There's a line in there that feels like it could pop up in a permutation city sequel:

> ... running a timing channel attack on the computational ultrastructure of spacetime itself, trying to break through to whatever's underneath...

Does that idea come up anywhere else in your work? If so, I'd go read it.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#99

Post by waveBidder »

airstrike wrote: post #93

OK, I stared at that animation far longer than I should have... then went digging and found this other link by the same author: http://www.gregegan.net/SCIENCE/Superpermutations/Superpermu...

his mastodon presence is full of such things

https://mathstodon.xyz/@gregeganSF

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#100

Post by PBnFlash »

k__ wrote: post #2

Pretty awesome book. Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.

If you can handle the science changing since publication in the 1930s(!!!) Olaf Stapledon is simply remarkable. "Last and first men" is one of my favorite books for just how unique it is, but "star maker" has some interesting parallels
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