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Permutation City (1994)

gregegan.net

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Re: Permutation City (1994)

#11

Post by Cacti »

Weidenwalker wrote: post #7
k__ wrote: post #2

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

If you enjoyed Permutation City, you‘d probably also like „The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect“ by Roger Williams! It explores a similar premise of a post-singularity future (though the mechanism is superintelligence rather than cellular automata/mind uploading), but rather than imagining exactly how we‘d get there, it tries to imagine what human flourishing would look like in a world of perfect abundance!

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.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#12

Post by gmuslera »

If you like this one Diaspora seem to have extrapolated some of this ideas and went several step further (and then added much more), and Zendegi that is a lot more modest in extrapolation and tries to be more realistic (and emotional).

He have also a lot of mindblowing short stories. The collection I've read by him was Axiomatic, that had many great ones.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#13

Post by G3rn0ti »

k__ wrote: post #2

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

> Would be cool if someone could recommend sci-fi that equally good.

You could consider „Diaspora“ by the same author a good sequel a couple of thousands of years into the future where humanity is but a faint memory called „dream apes“ as living fossils in this story.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#14

Post by Frotag »

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, 3 body problem author)
    - The Andromeda Strain (Crichton, more medsci than math)
    - Schilds Ladder, Diaspora (other Egan stuff)
The first two are especially similar to Egan's stuff in that the only real character is the civilization / setting not the people.

I've also tried some of the more common hard scifi recommendations like Reynolds and Stephenson, but I personally don't enjoy the dialogue / scenes meant for character development. I guess it's because the stories usually take a human-scale perspective instead of taking a what-if to its reality-bending extreme like Egan does.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#16

Post by gpvos »

Cacti wrote: post #11
Weidenwalker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you enjoyed Permutation City, you‘d probably also like „The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect“ by Roger Williams! It explores a similar premise of a post-singularity future (though the mechanism is superintelligence rather than cellular automata/mind uploading), but rather than imagining exactly how we‘d get there, it tries to imagine what human flourishing would look like in a world of perfect abundance!

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.

You could try his other writings, such as The Curators, which I just finished and can recommend. It has some sex in it but much more normal, and the violence is mostly abstract (like destroying a planet by teleporting it into its star). Available at his website http://localroger.com/ .

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#17

Post by cdogl »

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 / biotech hub.

Egan’s prose, characterisation and plotting are often weak, but almost every page has a new creative concept.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#19

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

surprisetalk wrote: post #6

My book review from last September: > Reads like a “consciousness and computers are cool” story written by an engineer. A few incredible ideas padded by weak storytelling and philosophical exposition. Probably would’ve been better as a short story. [0] https://taylor.town/books#permutation-city If you like this book, I recommend Accelerando , Piranesi , Dick's Ubik , and Ted Chiang's collections.

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.

Re: Permutation City (1994)

#20

Post by surprisetalk »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #19
surprisetalk wrote: post #6

My book review from last September: > Reads like a “consciousness and computers are cool” story written by an engineer. A few incredible ideas padded by weak storytelling and philosophical exposition. Probably would’ve been better as a short story. [0] https://taylor.town/books#permutation-city If you like this book, I recommend Accelerando , Piranesi , Dick's Ubik , and Ted Chiang's collections.

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.

Agreed. Speaking of underrated works from cyberpunk authors, you may be interested in William Gibson's non-fiction essay collection Distrust That Particular Flavor. My hot take: I think Gibson's non-fiction is much stronger than his fiction.

EDIT: Ooh, that collection includes Disneyland with the Death Penalty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Pena...

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