Fun to see this on HN today; I just finished it last night, on a recommendation from a friend. It was great, and left me full of unfinished thoughts -- just what you want from a good SF yarn.
For folks who enjoyed the ideas in it I can heartily recommend qntm's short story Lena (https://qntm.org/lena), which explores some of the same ideas but with a hefty dollop of (implied, but all the more intense for it) psychological horror.
Can confirm - I'm a huge fan of Greg Egan and specifically Permutation city, and also a huge fan of qntm's stories. Lena is probably the most famous, though not even the best ("I don't know Timmy" is better IMO).
Also, I finally read qntm's Antimemetics division and, while it is a bit lacking in the end, it is one of the most "oh wow this is a crazy good idea" stories I've read in years.
I'd also wager that "I don't know Timmy" is more thematically related. I feel most of the discussion in this thread glosses over what is most unsettling about Permutation City. It isn't just a book about what it could be like to be a simulated mind, it's most deeply about exploring the disquieting metaphysical consequences of computable minds. I can't think of a story that has as thoroughly scattered my basic grasp of reality as this one. Only Blindsight even begins to comes close.
In "I don't know Timmy" there's a sequence that goes:
"Well, we can't exactly turn it off."
"Why not?" asked Tim, halfway to the door, then stopped mid-stride and stood still, realising.
"Oh."
But you can turn it off without consequence and Permutation City explores the disturbing implications of why thoroughly (with a deus ex machina ending to save causal physics, as expected of an Egan story, physics is what has plot armor).
I thought Permutation City was great. One of my favorite sci-fi reads from the last couple of decades. It's probably about time to read it again, as most of the details escape me now.
Anyway, I was going to say... I've always thought that folks who enjoyed Permutation City might also enjoy Glasshouse[1] by Charles Stross[2].
The two novels aren't necessarily overtly similar, but I feel like there's a sort of abstract conceptual kinship there.
I've long wanted to read Charles Stross and somehow haven't. (Well, I read a few chapters of Accelerando years ago and never finished it, despiting liking it quite a bit.)
Do you think Glasshouse is a good place to start with his writing and is representative of his style? I loved Permutation City, one of my favorite books.
(I would've asked cstross himself but that would seem too awkward!)
Do you think Glasshouse is a good place to start with his writing and is representative of his style?
Well... to me, I'd almost divide Stross' works into two tranches: the "The Laundry Files" books, and everything else. In that regard, I think Glasshouse is fairly representative of the "everything else" tranche. But even then, there's a fair amount of variance in his works. I wouldn't, for example, necessarily compare Halting State and Glasshouse, or Rule 34 and Singularity Sky. I guess that's a way of saying that while Stross has his favored themes and topics, he's far from formulaic and I don't feel like you can pigeon-hole his "style" too narrowly.
That said, I haven't read every other work Stross has written, but I've read a pretty good chunk of them. And almost all of the "The Laundry Files" novels. Me personally, I recommend pretty much all of it. :-)
EDIT: Just realized that there's really a 3rd major tranche of works in Stross' ouvre: the "The Merchant Princes" books. I forgot about those, as I haven't actually read any of them (shame, shame, I know...). All of what I've read of Stross to date is from the "The Laundry Files" series or the "everything else" batch, minus "The Merchant Princes".
I once commented on HN how much I loved Accelerando and Charles Stross responded suggesting I read his The Rapture of the Nerds. I read it soon after and loved it. I very much enjoy the genre of people living inside computers; I welcome recommendations.
I think glasshouse is truly excellent, but to me it's not terribly representative of the other works (most of which I also enjoy - they're just different).
Egan has been my favorite author for years. I like his earlier works (like this one) much more than his last books. I have the impression most books he wrote and published in the last 15 years require a Ph.D. in either Mathematics or Theoretical Physics. Permutation City was my absolute gateway drug to his work and I could not stop talking about it when it first came out.
A series that explores similar ideas (although to a much smaller degree) of uploading, artificial life, and transfumanism, I've been enjoying lately is Pantheon. I just wanted to mention it here since I think you guys will enjoy it.
Zendegi is a recent book that is quite readable - but I agree regarding most of the others. Permutation City is one of my favorites but I think Diaspora must be my very favorite.
I read The Book of All Skies and quite liked it, but yeah, I basically just skimmed over the especially mathy sections. In that one the math is about (spoiler?) how gravity would work with a very unique planet, with comparisons drawn to electrostatics, I think. It was still enjoyable because it's still unique and interesting sci-fi.
> 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.
Hard to believe that it was written in 2005 given the one scene where the main character is walking around generating multiple interlocking crypto contracts to store money for his daughter.
It was published in 2005 -- actually I wrote the 9 novelettes that went into it from 1998-2003 (they were originally published in Asimov's SF magazine from 2002-2004 before I assembled and rewrote them to make the book).
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.
I'll have to disagree on this one. I'm a big Phillip K. Dick fan, and have read many of his works (though it's been a while), but I found Ubik to be a slog and didn't really enjoy it.
To anyone reading this - I'm not saying don't read it - it's a beloved book! I'm just saying, if you read it and don't enjoy it, keep in mind that you might be like me and enjoy his other stuff more.
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.
I liked the expansion of the ideas. I was bored a couple of times so it could be compressed a bit into maybe a novella half the size of the book, but a short story would have left me wanting.
No one reads Greg Egan for the character building or any of that other literary bullshit.
This is the novel that introduces the idea that a simulation universe need not have another universe simulating it. Hell, it's the only novel that has that idea. There is more insight here than we could extract from a thousand other authors, philosophers, and thinkers. But who cares, the characters were sort of cardboard and he has the whole r/menwritingwomen thing going on.
Neal Stephensons Anathem is also based on these same ideas- specifically the concepts of timeless physics, and the idea that mathematical and physical existence are identical.
I justs finished reading the book and the idea that a simulation universe need not have another universe simulating it indeed baffled me. How do you make sense of that? I was disappointed there wasn't a clearer motivation for it.
By more insight do you mean pure speculation? I could say Liu Cixin has more insight than a thousand other minds with his Dark Forest and dimensionality, but again it's all speculative fiction.
Also, some people actually like well-written characters. I know it sounds strange.
I loved this book. It’s the sort of book that made me occasionally pause and think about the ideas presented in it. Boltzmann brains still fascinate me. The spot market for CPU power was visionary. When reading it again when I was older I only found the characters a bit weak.
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.
Big Fan of Egan's short stories. I feel like they are his strongest work and maybe because they can lean more on ideas. Luminous about math grad students discovering some secrets in math is pretty great.
Wang's Carpets which became Diaspora is mind blowing.
Zendegi is an interesting novel by him I never see anyone mention. I enjoyed it and the characters are a bit more developed. It also has a Eliezer Yudkowsky stand in as the big bad guy i seem to recall. Which made me chuckle.
I think of Zendegi quite often when I think about the debates surrounding digital companions, etc. I don't think the book had great commercial success.
I'm a big fan of Egan, having read a few of his books and a bunch of short stories. Personally, Zendegi was the weakest of his books by quite a bit. (Still good, just... not great.)
I’ve liked every Egan book I read but also want to mention Distress. I got shipped it accidentally when I ordered Diaspora and the seller told me to keep it.
It’s set in the “near future” so probably 2020 since it was published in 1998 and does a good job, I think, of talking about things that are happening now- third world empowerment, body augmentation, transgenders, precision pharmacy, biohacking.
And some things we don’t have yet- artificial island nations, self-autists, custom engineered plagues.
I like it because it’s one of those books that stuck with me for describing tech that “we should and one day will have” in that Egan described a “pharm” that compounds medication on the fly to precisely medicate us. For example, it will give you stimulants with your vitamix but have to counter it the next day based on how your body performs. I can’t wait for that and hate having to wait days to adjust meds. I feel similarly about Stephenson’s metaverse description and young lady’s illustrated primer, and nanodrones, and cryptocurrency. And Doctorow’s “comm” device that he described a few years before the iPhone.
Distress also has a short passage explaining the collapse of the collapse of CBDs and inflation of the suburban property market and cost of living due to remote work, set in an area of suburban Sydney that’s now not far off Egan’s predictions. Few hard science fiction authors of recent decades can pull that off, as the 21st century has shown that our 20th century science fiction tropes are either already here (computing and networking revolution, hydrogen bombs, DNA sequencing) or will likely not materialise for centuries (space colonisation, mind uploading). Egan has a talent for speculating about little details of life that illustrate a very different world.
> Egan’s prose, characterisation and plotting are often weak, but almost every page has a new creative concept.
I agree with all of that. I was thinking recently about how Egan compares to Neal Stephenson after some discussion of his (NS) fiction here a few days ago [1]. They both (imo) are weak at characterisation etc. - but to me Egan's work is among some of the best sf I've ever read [1], wheras I find reading Stephenson an ordeal. I think that's down to the depth of the ideas that Egan explores, but I'd be interested in what others think of how he compares to other authors.
IMO, Egan's prose and plotting are not notably bad. Characters are probably his weakest point. Plus, Egan knows when to stop rambling, or rather, he doesn't ramble. As opposed to the other guy.
Diaspora is my favorite Egan book. Permutation City seems to get talked about more, but the dust theory stuff just felt implausible, and it has one of the worst sex scenes I've ever read. Maybe it's because Diaspora is less concerned with anything as abstract as consciousness and more interested in how different forms of life play out, which I find fun when it's done well.
The sex in that sex scene is supposed to be cringingly bad. Supposed to be uncomfortable to read. Did you think it was poorly done, or was it just too uncomfortable-on-purpose?
> Egan’s prose, characterisation and plotting are often weak
I sort of agree, but personally I like the rawness of it. For a similarly unrefined yet intellectually stimulating writing, check out Gregory Benford who used to be a professor of physics.
Egan is prolific and his quality is quite uneven. I loved Permutation City, Diaspora and Dichronauts (although the latter had a weak story). But other books like Scale and Phoresis are downright bad. It's so hard to pick which Egan books to read because often the ones that sound the most interesting are the worst.
If they ever want to shoot an 'Even Blacker Mirror' TV anthology, they should adapt Egan's short stories. 'Axiomatic', especially.
Two stories in that collection from before the modern social internet (1992), with non-internet somewhat fantastic premises, nonetheless often come to mind when observing modern online self-presentational & affiliational dynamics:
• 'The Hundred Light-Year Diary' - a method of receiving tiny (tweet-like!) messages from the future – eventually rationed out to all people! – examines questions of free-will & (self-)deception, at many levels
• 'Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies' - how much of what you believe/aver is imposed by your neighborhood?
Greg Egan is an acquired taste of hard SF. I would highly recommend someone who wants to get in to start here - it is short stories and some of his very best. Also one of my best cover of sci fi books
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For folks who enjoyed the ideas in it I can heartily recommend qntm's short story Lena (https://qntm.org/lena), which explores some of the same ideas but with a hefty dollop of (implied, but all the more intense for it) psychological horror.
Also, I finally read qntm's Antimemetics division and, while it is a bit lacking in the end, it is one of the most "oh wow this is a crazy good idea" stories I've read in years.
In "I don't know Timmy" there's a sequence that goes:
"Well, we can't exactly turn it off."
"Why not?" asked Tim, halfway to the door, then stopped mid-stride and stood still, realising.
"Oh."
But you can turn it off without consequence and Permutation City explores the disturbing implications of why thoroughly (with a deus ex machina ending to save causal physics, as expected of an Egan story, physics is what has plot armor).
qntm is becoming one of my favorite authors as well.
I haven't read Permutation City (on my list) but I really enjoyed Disaspora by the same author (Greg Egan). Similar themes from what I gather.
I'll add Schild's Ladder to the recommendations.
Anyway, I was going to say... I've always thought that folks who enjoyed Permutation City might also enjoy Glasshouse[1] by Charles Stross[2]. The two novels aren't necessarily overtly similar, but I feel like there's a sort of abstract conceptual kinship there.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_(novel)
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross
Do you think Glasshouse is a good place to start with his writing and is representative of his style? I loved Permutation City, one of my favorite books.
(I would've asked cstross himself but that would seem too awkward!)
Well... to me, I'd almost divide Stross' works into two tranches: the "The Laundry Files" books, and everything else. In that regard, I think Glasshouse is fairly representative of the "everything else" tranche. But even then, there's a fair amount of variance in his works. I wouldn't, for example, necessarily compare Halting State and Glasshouse, or Rule 34 and Singularity Sky. I guess that's a way of saying that while Stross has his favored themes and topics, he's far from formulaic and I don't feel like you can pigeon-hole his "style" too narrowly.
That said, I haven't read every other work Stross has written, but I've read a pretty good chunk of them. And almost all of the "The Laundry Files" novels. Me personally, I recommend pretty much all of it. :-)
EDIT: Just realized that there's really a 3rd major tranche of works in Stross' ouvre: the "The Merchant Princes" books. I forgot about those, as I haven't actually read any of them (shame, shame, I know...). All of what I've read of Stross to date is from the "The Laundry Files" series or the "everything else" batch, minus "The Merchant Princes".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rapture_of_the_Nerds
A series that explores similar ideas (although to a much smaller degree) of uploading, artificial life, and transfumanism, I've been enjoying lately is Pantheon. I just wanted to mention it here since I think you guys will enjoy it.
> 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.
Hard to believe that it was written in 2005 given the one scene where the main character is walking around generating multiple interlocking crypto contracts to store money for his daughter.
Thanks for the recommendations. I read and liked most of the books in your list, so I'll likely also appreciate the ones I haven't.
EDIT: I would also recommend Watts' Blindsight.
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To anyone reading this - I'm not saying don't read it - it's a beloved book! I'm just saying, if you read it and don't enjoy it, keep in mind that you might be like me and enjoy his other stuff more.
EDIT: Ooh, that collection includes Disneyland with the Death Penalty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Pena...
This is the novel that introduces the idea that a simulation universe need not have another universe simulating it. Hell, it's the only novel that has that idea. There is more insight here than we could extract from a thousand other authors, philosophers, and thinkers. But who cares, the characters were sort of cardboard and he has the whole r/menwritingwomen thing going on.
Also, some people actually like well-written characters. I know it sounds strange.
This book feels more like the deep exploration of a cool idea, which is why I'm recommending it in this context :)
Absolutely. Not to mention the use of proof of work, just 2 years after the idea was actually proposed. Very ahead of its time.
It's ok. You fascinate them too.
Egan’s prose, characterisation and plotting are often weak, but almost every page has a new creative concept.
Wang's Carpets which became Diaspora is mind blowing.
Zendegi is an interesting novel by him I never see anyone mention. I enjoyed it and the characters are a bit more developed. It also has a Eliezer Yudkowsky stand in as the big bad guy i seem to recall. Which made me chuckle.
It’s set in the “near future” so probably 2020 since it was published in 1998 and does a good job, I think, of talking about things that are happening now- third world empowerment, body augmentation, transgenders, precision pharmacy, biohacking.
And some things we don’t have yet- artificial island nations, self-autists, custom engineered plagues.
I like it because it’s one of those books that stuck with me for describing tech that “we should and one day will have” in that Egan described a “pharm” that compounds medication on the fly to precisely medicate us. For example, it will give you stimulants with your vitamix but have to counter it the next day based on how your body performs. I can’t wait for that and hate having to wait days to adjust meds. I feel similarly about Stephenson’s metaverse description and young lady’s illustrated primer, and nanodrones, and cryptocurrency. And Doctorow’s “comm” device that he described a few years before the iPhone.
I agree with all of that. I was thinking recently about how Egan compares to Neal Stephenson after some discussion of his (NS) fiction here a few days ago [1]. They both (imo) are weak at characterisation etc. - but to me Egan's work is among some of the best sf I've ever read [1], wheras I find reading Stephenson an ordeal. I think that's down to the depth of the ideas that Egan explores, but I'd be interested in what others think of how he compares to other authors.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39287616
[2] Permutation City. Diaspora, short works in collections like Luninous, etc.
Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman, about what it's like to be colonized.
Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen, about what it's like to be part of a computer.
I sort of agree, but personally I like the rawness of it. For a similarly unrefined yet intellectually stimulating writing, check out Gregory Benford who used to be a professor of physics.
I have a few other books of his, some seem sci-fi, some seem fantasy, but haven't read them yet.
Seems he's not been idle: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Williams_(author)
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Two stories in that collection from before the modern social internet (1992), with non-internet somewhat fantastic premises, nonetheless often come to mind when observing modern online self-presentational & affiliational dynamics:
• 'The Hundred Light-Year Diary' - a method of receiving tiny (tweet-like!) messages from the future – eventually rationed out to all people! – examines questions of free-will & (self-)deception, at many levels
• 'Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies' - how much of what you believe/aver is imposed by your neighborhood?
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Greg-Egan-Stories-Science/dp/194...