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Permutation City (1994)

gregegan.net

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Re: Permutation City (1994)

#191

Post by riffraff »

edanm wrote: post #89
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see Ubik mentioned. While far from unknown, it typically takes a back seat to other works by Dick, and IMHO it's the absolute best. It is unsettling in a way comparable, although different, to Kafka.

I'll have to disagree on this one. I'm a big Phillip K. Dick fan, and have read many of his works (though it's been a while), but I found Ubik to be a slog and didn't really enjoy it. To anyone reading this - I'm not saying don't read it - it's a beloved book! I'm just saying, if you read it and don't enjoy it, keep in mind that you might be like me and enjoy his other stuff more.

I'm with you on this, I liked the ideas in Ubik, but I found it really hard to go through it compared to other Dick works, but of course everyone is different.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#192

Post by Cacti »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #31
Cacti wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, is that the one with the incredibly explicit, and incredibly unnecessary, sex based around the authors obsession with fucking dead bodies and fucking and impregnating his daughter? I’m very far from a prude, but JFC. Its clearly the authors vehicle to play out his fantasies, masquerading as a scientific-fi novel.

Not sure we are talking about the same book here. It's certainly quite twisted, with people taking out death contracts that allow them to die painfully (but they are ressurected by the godlike AI every time). There's also torture and other unsavoury things. To me, this was not unnecessary, but quite fundamental to the story. Everyone was trapped by the AI who would not let anyone come to harm without their permission…

I was going to post the final few pages of the book here as one example, but it’s way more graphic than I remembered, so I won’t.

But nothing at all was served by us reading about how deftly the main characters 13 year old daughter blew him until he was hard enough to ride. Or the main characters musings about their two (very underage) children having sex and how he was totally ok with it. Or the long section about the wife urging him to impregnate his daughter. Or the other dozen weird-ass things in that chapter.

There’s several more examples like this in the book.

The author is not exactly the first to explore potential consequences of effective immortality, but they are one of the few who was seemingly unable to do it without repeatedly getting to multi-page, graphic, and violent, sex scenes.

Like, if one feels the need for that kind of thing, William S Burroughs and Tom Wolfe already beat that one to death decades ago.

As another example more relevant to this crowd, Altered Carbon covered the exact same subject matter, and did so without needing to write smut for teenage boys.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#193

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

Cacti wrote: post #192
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure we are talking about the same book here. It's certainly quite twisted, with people taking out death contracts that allow them to die painfully (but they are ressurected by the godlike AI every time). There's also torture and other unsavoury things. To me, this was not unnecessary, but quite fundamental to the story. Everyone was trapped by the AI who would not let anyone come to harm without their permission…

I was going to post the final few pages of the book here as one example, but it’s way more graphic than I remembered, so I won’t. But nothing at all was served by us reading about how deftly the main characters 13 year old daughter blew him until he was hard enough to ride. Or the main characters musings about their two (very underage) children having sex and how he was totally ok with it. Or the long section about t…

I confess I had forgotten the very end, where they are trying to rebuild the human race with a limited pool of people. It definitely did not need to be that graphic, although it is somewhat in keeping with the generally disturbing themes throughout.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it as something very different to the usual sci fi fare.

I also liked Altered Carbon, although I found it read more like a hyper violent blockbuster action movie than a novel. Other than they both use ressurection as a plot device, they are very different stories. The violence in it I actually find more gratuitous than in Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#194

Post by Cacti »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #193
Cacti wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to post the final few pages of the book here as one example, but it’s way more graphic than I remembered, so I won’t. But nothing at all was served by us reading about how deftly the main characters 13 year old daughter blew him until he was hard enough to ride. Or the main characters musings about their two (very underage) children having sex and how he was totally ok with it. Or the long section about t…

I confess I had forgotten the very end, where they are trying to rebuild the human race with a limited pool of people. It definitely did not need to be that graphic, although it is somewhat in keeping with the generally disturbing themes throughout. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it as something very different to the usual sci fi fare. I also liked Altered Carbon, although I found it read more like a hyper violent blockbust…

Oh, I was referring to the books, not the Netflix series.

I enjoyed Prime Intellect, but I enjoyed it like a mindless action film or a trashy beach book, and I’d never actually recommend it to anyone.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#195

Post by kybernetikos »

edanm wrote: post #95
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!)

I think glasshouse is truly excellent, but to me it's not terribly representative of the other works (most of which I also enjoy - they're just different).

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#196

Post by jamilton »

ews wrote: post #152

Egan has been my favorite author for years. I like his earlier works (like this one) much more than his last books. I have the impression most books he wrote and published in the last 15 years require a Ph.D. in either Mathematics or Theoretical Physics. Permutation City was my absolute gateway drug to his work and I could not stop talking about it when it first came out. A series that explores similar ideas (althoug…

I read The Book of All Skies and quite liked it, but yeah, I basically just skimmed over the especially mathy sections. In that one the math is about (spoiler?) how gravity would work with a very unique planet, with comparisons drawn to electrostatics, I think. It was still enjoyable because it's still unique and interesting sci-fi.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#197

Post by matkoniecz »

MeImCounting wrote: post #169
matkoniecz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Blindsight was extremely on depressing/grimderp/evil side. I really like hard SF and will never again read by this author. > Standard internet Watts warning that the Rift novels have random sexual torture just in case you prefer to avoid that in thread next to this one is not really surprising me Also, not really sure is Blindsight actually hard SF. It seems to be soft one at most with a lot getting clos…

Maybe we read totally different books called "Blindsight" by Peter Watts because this sounds like a completely different experience than what I and most other readers have had.

The one with sort-of-vampires with epileptic effects triggered by corners, creatures capable of movement starting and completing in way their movement was not noticeable by human brain and curiously trusting people in way that ended in predictable bad ending?

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#198

Post by MeImCounting »

matkoniecz wrote: post #197
MeImCounting wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we read totally different books called "Blindsight" by Peter Watts because this sounds like a completely different experience than what I and most other readers have had.

The one with sort-of-vampires with epileptic effects triggered by corners, creatures capable of movement starting and completing in way their movement was not noticeable by human brain and curiously trusting people in way that ended in predictable bad ending?

Yeah the crucifix glitch is kind of silly though it does have an internally consistent explanation. I feel like maybe you didnt read the notes and references (complete with citations)? Because otherwise you would know this?

Was the ending actually bad? like badly written or bad for the characters? Personally I thought the ending was good. It felt inevitable and also positive. Humanity got to keep living and the main character reached some type of personal growth.

Anyway heres the section from the notes and references that you must not have read about the "creatures capable of movement - not noticeable by the human brain"

For example, the invisibility trick of that young, dumb scrambler— the one who restricted its movement to the gaps in Human vision— occured to me while reading about something called inattentional blindness. A Russian guy called Yarbus was the first to figure out the whole saccadal glitch in Human vision, back in the nineteen sixties15. Since then, a variety of researchers have made objects pop in and out of the visual field unnoticed, conducted conversations with hapless subjects who never realised that their conversational partner had changed halfway through the interview, and generally proven that the Human brain just fails to notice an awful lot of what's going on around it16, 17, 18. Check out the demos at the website of the Visual Cognition Lab at the University of Illinois19 and you'll see what I mean. This really is rather mind-blowing, people. There could be Scientologists walking among us right now and if they moved just right, we'd never even see them.

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