Egan, Greg

• Permutation City

  • This could be classified as a "cyberpunk" novel, but I think it falls more in the tradition of classic speculative fiction. The setting for this book is really the story, as the book forsees a future in which computing power is up for sale (which is surprising to me...I always figured bandwidth would be the bottleneck rather than processor capacity, which it is). Why do people need so much computing power? Mostly, to run Copies. In this new reality, people can have themselves scanned, and then that information can be stored and activated as needed to run a complete conscious simulation of your personality, albeit at a maximum speed seventeen times slower than real time.

    Really a fascinating concept. The only drawback is that, as a Copy, you have no influence of real events, and you "live" with the knowledge that someone can pull the plug at any moment. Several plot threads are covered in this book, including a man trying to do an experiment with his Copy and a woman trying to create a new form of life from a self-contained Universe of simplified physical rules (in virtual reality). The main part of the book comes into focus when the experimenter, Paul Durham, discovers a way to create virtually limitless computing power that will last for eternity. He offers the chance to live forever...as a simulation guaranteed never to die. Ultimately, it is interesting to see the ramifications of such eternal life and how the characters respond to it. The book wasn't a real thrilling page-turner, but it was solid and very interesting.

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