Permutation City

De: Greg Egan

Narrado por: Adam Epstein

The good news is that you have just awakened into Eternal Life. You are going to live forever. Immortality is a reality. A medical miracle? Not exactly.

The bad news is that you are a scrap of electronic code. The world you see around you, the you that is seeing it, has been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. You are a Copy that knows it is a copy.

The good news is that there is a way out. By law, every Copy has the option of terminating itself, and waking up to normal flesh-and-blood life again. The bail-out is on the utilities menu. You pull it down...The bad news is that it doesn't work. Someone has blocked the bail-out option. And you know who did it. You did. The other you. The real you. The one that wants to keep you here forever.

©2013 Greg Egan (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Moral dilemmas of digitalization

This exploration of digital consciousness is heavier on the philosophy than hard SF, although enough near-future exposition and tech is provided to support the premise: supercomputers allowing for digitization of living minds. Once that platform is established, Egan is free to play with all the high concept questions that result from a physics-free playground subject to will and desires. In the virtual environments that these uploaded consciousnesses inhabit, every sensation and perception can be modified to the individual’s tastes, as can those tastes and indeed- the individual’s own personality. The story’s drama comes, in part, from characters altering their very selves to accommodate circumstances. Additional moral questions come into play when system-generated additional personalities are introduced to provide community, and when intelligent life evolves from scratch in the VR and begin to seek their own origin. When these intelligences come into conflict with one another, or with the outside world, where the same computer resources are in demand for improving life for the billions of our reality, additional dilemmas ensue. All in all, the novel does a great job extending the trope and giving it the full examination it deserves, although it’s a bit weak on the characters or action.

Horrendous Narration Ruins Any Story

Narrator rendered it impossible to continue, returning. Story up to point of departure was very interesting.

narrator was distractingly bad

narrator's tone and delivery were mostly flat but inconsistent, with a noticable amount of mispronunciation, and extremely poor non-English accents.

i listened anyway because I enjoyed the story.

Narrator provides a surmountable challenge

Many reviewers point out that the narrator's performance of this audiobook leaves much to be desired. True, but I found his reading to be passable enough at x1.25 speed and was able to enjoy the content of the book.

That said, some of Egan's very complex ideas are hard to grasp via audio only. I found it useful to visit his Dust Theory FAQ page to help me sit and contemplate his ideas.

Overall, the ideas are fascinating, but the character's motivations are murky. As with a lot of idea-driven science fiction, character development takes a hit. Sometimes, as in Charles Stross' work, flat or unrelateable characters make it hard to enjoy the otherwise good hard science fiction. Somehow, the brilliance and audacity of Eagan's ideas overshadow the books other shortcomings.

good, maybe not as good as I remembered

pretty mediocre performance, with several technical mispronunciations.

I read the paperback in the 90's when it came out, and wanted to review it two decades later. was just a bit of a slog, actually.

wild ideas throughout, minimal characterization