Permutation City

Let me start this off by saying that I’m a fan of hard(ish) science fiction. I enjoy reading through the technical details and jargon and theory - as long as there’s a payoff. Permutation City has the best payoff of any hard science fiction novel that I’ve read.

In a nutshell, Permutation City explores the concept of virtual immortality in the form of Copes - cobbled together pieces of humans that feel sentient, but don’t adhere to the underlying physics that constitute the real world. Explaining more than that gets into spoiler territory, so I’ll leave it at that.

Minor spoilers ahead

The first third of the book goes as you’d expect: Greg Egan describes the economic, cultural, and scientific ramifications of new technologies in 2045. It may be a bit dry for folks uninterested in computational/psychological experiments run on a Copy or the made up physics of a self contained simulation called the Autoverse. I had a grand time, but to each their own.

The second third of the book unveils a plot to create a virtual utopia for Copies to live in forever, unbound by the computational costs of meatspace. There’s a bit of mystery here, as the plot unfolds. This section raises a ton of questions, but answers them in a satisfying (if exposition heavy) confrontation between two characters.

The final third of the book is set entirely in the virtual utopia and without spoiling things let’s just say something goes wrong and the already shaky existential status of said virtual utopia gets even shakier. The ‘rules’ of the virtual world start to unravel, and the three plots of the novel resolve themselves masterfully. Oh and there are now aliens in the virtual utopia.

Permutation City, like most great works of science fiction, tackles heavy philosophical questions. Beyond the obvious “What is reality?”, the novel poses questions as thought provoking and bizarre as: “Are you the same person if you re-program your entire personality?” or “What is the optimal way to spend infinity?” or “How does a sentient virtual being perceive time if its state of mind are computed in reverse order?”.

It was a mindfuck throughout, and I loved it. Highly recommend.

Buy it here