Greg Egan's Permutation City
Permutation city is a science-fiction novel by Greg Egan. It was released in 1995 and in the same year won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The book showed me a story I have never seen in the genre before. At first glance plot looks typical: human race creates technology that lets them move their conciousness into a computer program, which makes their "copies" - as they call them - immortal. Yet, inventor of the computer, Paul Durham, wants the copies to have something fun to do during billions of years they have ahead, so with help of Maria Deluca he creates an artificial inteligence race of evolvable aliens from scratch.
The plot, unfortunately for me, wasn't the most important part of the novel. To understand it from A to Z, one needs to go deeper and discover complexities of the Dust Theory - which, for me, was too much to digest …show more content…
during hot summer days I was reading the book. I cannot blame the author; he is an educated mathematician and programmer and his books are considered hard science-fiction, a subgenre, that puts emphasis on science and technology (which means a lot of technical details). I knew what I was getting into, but it proved to be too difficult for me; this is why I will focus on the plot and narrative of the story.
The plot itself was brilliant and I loved it.
I applaud Egan's knowledge and imagination. In his book he shows, in a plausible way, what could happen if human race was to start "living" in a computer program AND creates a race of human-made AI aliens! Unfortunately though, author's writing didn't speak to me, action was stagnant and in the end it took me three months to get through Permutation city. This created a dilemma for me - a genius idea connected with almost no pace and dark and heavy atmosphere. I do not actually mind the technical details, they make the story more credible (that is why I chose a hard science fiction book in the first place), though it required a lot of time with dictionary and Wikipedia research to read and at least try to understand basic physical and computer science foundation. What is needed is also ability of abstract thinking, which is quite obvious, when we are given such an amount of mathematic knowledge. Still, I believe a book like this, that seems like it is created for a certain group of people, can be written in a more approachable and "friendly"
way.
Even though, I feel like it was me who failed this time, not the author. It appears that understanding just basics of Permutation city is not enough. I do not recommend the book to those who are unfamiliar with quantum mechanics, computer programming and such. Despite striving to enjoy the plot I did not make it - Greg Egan created new obstacles for me on, it seemed, every page. I finished the novel with mixed feelings, but I know for sure I will not reach for another hard science fiction position in a long time.
The plot, unfortunately for me, wasn't the most important part of the novel. To understand it from A to Z, one needs to go deeper and discover complexities of the Dust Theory - which, for me, was too much to digest …show more content…
during hot summer days I was reading the book. I cannot blame the author; he is an educated mathematician and programmer and his books are considered hard science-fiction, a subgenre, that puts emphasis on science and technology (which means a lot of technical details). I knew what I was getting into, but it proved to be too difficult for me; this is why I will focus on the plot and narrative of the story.
The plot itself was brilliant and I loved it.
I applaud Egan's knowledge and imagination. In his book he shows, in a plausible way, what could happen if human race was to start "living" in a computer program AND creates a race of human-made AI aliens! Unfortunately though, author's writing didn't speak to me, action was stagnant and in the end it took me three months to get through Permutation city. This created a dilemma for me - a genius idea connected with almost no pace and dark and heavy atmosphere. I do not actually mind the technical details, they make the story more credible (that is why I chose a hard science fiction book in the first place), though it required a lot of time with dictionary and Wikipedia research to read and at least try to understand basic physical and computer science foundation. What is needed is also ability of abstract thinking, which is quite obvious, when we are given such an amount of mathematic knowledge. Still, I believe a book like this, that seems like it is created for a certain group of people, can be written in a more approachable and "friendly"
way.
Even though, I feel like it was me who failed this time, not the author. It appears that understanding just basics of Permutation city is not enough. I do not recommend the book to those who are unfamiliar with quantum mechanics, computer programming and such. Despite striving to enjoy the plot I did not make it - Greg Egan created new obstacles for me on, it seemed, every page. I finished the novel with mixed feelings, but I know for sure I will not reach for another hard science fiction position in a long time.