Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Permutation City (1994)

gregegan.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 207 posts

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#141

Post by BillSaysThis »

mindcrime wrote: post #127
edanm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)

Do you think Glasshouse is a good place to start with his writing and is representative of his style? Well... to me, I'd almost divide Stross' works into two tranches: the "The Laundry Files" books, and everything else. In that regard, I think Glasshouse is fairly representative of the "everything else" tranche. But even then, there's a fair amount of variance in his works. I wouldn't, for example, necessarily compar…

Merchant Princes series is about my favorite cstross!

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#142

Post by prepend »

sorokod wrote: post #136
prepend wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Netflix version is a diluted version of a rough and angry book. The idea of consciousness executed in hardware is explored, including simulated torture in subjective slow time (possibly in one of the sequels: Broken Angels or Woken Furies).

I think they also changed the societal and cultural aspects quite a bit. In the book, everything was accepted and there were weren’t any “downtrodden.” The show changed all this with the meths being super billionaires and then there being lots of poor people. And the whole thing with the rebellion.

Book takashi was an envoy super spy person with immense training that stuck with him through sleeves. Tv takashi is like a rebel/terrorist who just got some training and has personality.

In the book, it was fruitless to fight against the government because what’s the point? The tv show seems to want to make a more simple rebels vs big brother.

Still cool, but I think changed the flavor quite a bit.

Second season, of course, is rubbish and I wouldn’t recommend watching it to anyone. It’s suspiciously horrible given how good the first was.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#143

Post by sat0ri »

k__ wrote: post #2

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

Have you read Gibson's "Sprawl" and "Bridge" trilogies? I read them > ten years ago and haven't read any sci-fi since, these books kinda put a subconscious "it does not get better, better diversify into other genres" attitude into my brain and personally I'm OK with that. Was reading a lot of sci-fi before that.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#144

Post by mindcrime »

BillSaysThis wrote: post #141
mindcrime wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Glasshouse is a good place to start with his writing and is representative of his style? Well... to me, I'd almost divide Stross' works into two tranches: the "The Laundry Files" books, and everything else. In that regard, I think Glasshouse is fairly representative of the "everything else" tranche. But even then, there's a fair amount of variance in his works. I wouldn't, for example, necessarily compar…

Merchant Princes series is about my favorite cstross!

I actually have the first two or three books in that series on my shelf already, waiting to be read. Just haven't worked my way around to them yet. Soon, hopefully...

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#145

Post by sorokod »

prepend wrote: post #142
sorokod wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netflix version is a diluted version of a rough and angry book. The idea of consciousness executed in hardware is explored, including simulated torture in subjective slow time (possibly in one of the sequels: Broken Angels or Woken Furies).

I think they also changed the societal and cultural aspects quite a bit. In the book, everything was accepted and there were weren’t any “downtrodden.” The show changed all this with the meths being super billionaires and then there being lots of poor people. And the whole thing with the rebellion. Book takashi was an envoy super spy person with immense training that stuck with him through sleeves. Tv takashi is like…

Not sure about "it was fruitless to fight against the government because what’s the point", a rebellion is a worthwhile thing in itself. "Make it personal" [1] is almost a call to arms.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/169549-the-personal-as-ever...

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#146

Post by drewthestu »

zeekaran wrote: post #122
marginrabbit wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have already mentioned qntm, but I’ll put another plug in for “Valuable Humans in Transit” https://qntm.org/vhitaos Sol Quy with monthly short stories: https://solquy.substack.com/p/111123-the-gunslinger Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” series is fantastic. Vernor Vinge can be a bit variable, but I would start with “A Fire Upon the Deep”

Children of Time is great. Children of Ruin was a lot of fun, but I was convinced by friends Children of Memory wasn't worth it.

[dead]

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#147

Post by davely »

mvdtnz wrote: post #133
davely wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, boy. Blindsight was a book that made me realize that maybe I like the _idea_ of hard sci-fi more than I actually like reading it.

Blindsight is by no means a hard sci fi book.

Hah, well then, maybe I just don't like vampires!

In all seriousness, I thought I had seen it in a list of "top hard sci-fi books" awhile back and a quick Kagi search seems to imply that a lot of people seem consider it hard sci-fi for whatever reason.

Maybe this means there's still a chance for me.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#148

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

zupatol wrote: post #138
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one reads Greg Egan for the character building or any of that other literary bullshit. This is the novel that introduces the idea that a simulation universe need not have another universe simulating it. Hell, it's the only novel that has that idea. There is more insight here than we could extract from a thousand other authors, philosophers, and thinkers. But who cares, the characters were sort of cardboard and he…

I justs finished reading the book and the idea that a simulation universe need not have another universe simulating it indeed baffled me. How do you make sense of that? I was disappointed there wasn't a clearer motivation for it.

> How do you make sense of that?

Chew on it for awhile. It's worth it. The explanation provided was sparse, but sufficient to justify.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#150

Post by Vetch »

edanm wrote: post #86
Doches wrote: post #29

Fun to see this on HN today; I just finished it last night, on a recommendation from a friend. It was great, and left me full of unfinished thoughts -- just what you want from a good SF yarn. For folks who enjoyed the ideas in it I can heartily recommend qntm's short story Lena ( https://qntm.org/lena ), which explores some of the same ideas but with a hefty dollop of (implied, but all the more intense for it) psycho…

Can confirm - I'm a huge fan of Greg Egan and specifically Permutation city, and also a huge fan of qntm's stories. Lena is probably the most famous, though not even the best ("I don't know Timmy" is better IMO). Also, I finally read qntm's Antimemetics division and, while it is a bit lacking in the end, it is one of the most "oh wow this is a crazy good idea" stories I've read in years.

I'd also wager that "I don't know Timmy" is more thematically related. I feel most of the discussion in this thread glosses over what is most unsettling about Permutation City. It isn't just a book about what it could be like to be a simulated mind, it's most deeply about exploring the disquieting metaphysical consequences of computable minds. I can't think of a story that has as thoroughly scattered my basic grasp of reality as this one. Only Blindsight even begins to comes close.

In "I don't know Timmy" there's a sequence that goes:

"Well, we can't exactly turn it off."

"Why not?" asked Tim, halfway to the door, then stopped mid-stride and stood still, realising.

"Oh."

But you can turn it off without consequence and Permutation City explores the disturbing implications of why thoroughly (with a deus ex machina ending to save causal physics, as expected of an Egan story, physics is what has plot armor).

Post reply on HN