Permutation City
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| Permutation City | |
.jpg/200px-PermutationCity(1stEd).jpg) Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | Greg Egan |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Millennium Orion Publishing Group |
| Publication date | 1994 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 310 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 1-857-98174-X |
Permutation City is a 1994 science fiction novel by Greg Egan that explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, via various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality. It won the John W. Campbell Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year in 1995 and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award that same year. The novel was also cited in a 2003 Scientific American article on multiverses by Max Tegmark.
Contents |
[edit] Main themes
Permutation City deals with philosophical questions common in cyberpunk and postcyberpunk works like Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix – for example, is there any difference between a perfect computer simulation and a "real" person?
Like some of these other works, it begins with the assumption that human consciousness is "Turing computability"; unlike them, it attempts to draw the consequences of this assumption out to their logical ends. Through rigorous arguments, Egan deconstructs and undermines not only the traditional notions of self, future, and personality, but also of physical reality itself. Eventually, Egan formulates the Logic of the Dust theory of reality, arguing (among other things) that our universe could be an "algorithm" running without the need of any physical substrate.
Another idea expressed in the novel is that of the Autoverse, an artificial life simulator ultimately based on a cellular automaton complex enough to represent the substratum of an artificial chemistry. The Autoverse is a clockwork Newtonian chemistry set, internally consistent and vaguely resembling real chemistry. In the novel, tiny environments - simulated in the Autoverse and filled with small populations of a simple artificial lifeform - are opposed to huge virtual realities making heavy use of heuristics and therefore intrinsically incoherent.
Egan also explores the meaning of solipsism through the concept of a "Solipsist Nation" that is developed by a "Copy" (computer simulation of a "real" person).
Further Egan novels which deal with these issues from various other perspectives include Diaspora and Schild's Ladder.
[edit] Opening Poem
The book opens with the following 20 line anagrammatic poem, in which all lines are anagrams of the book's title.
Into a mute crypt, I
Can't pity our time
Turn amity poetic
Ciao, tiny trumpet!
Maniac piety tutor
Tame purity tonic
Up, meiotic tyrant!
I taint my top cure
To it, my true panic
Put at my nice riot
To trace impunity
I tempt an outcry, I
Pin my taut erotic
Art to epic mutiny
Can't you permit it
To cite my apt ruin?
My true icon: tap it
Copy time, turn it; a
Rite to cut my pain
Atomic putty? Rien!
