~C4Chaos

I get my fiction fix from TV and movies. When it comes to books, I
prefer mind-expanding nonfiction rather than spend my time with fiction
novels. I didn’t know what urged me to pick up my old (1994) copy of Permutation City by Greg Egan.
I even forgot that I had that book. I left it the last time I went to
Ireland. But for some reason, a few nights ago before I went to bed, I
was compelled to pick it up and read the first few pages. From then on
I couldn’t put it down until I finish the damn thing! Sorry Daniel
Dennett but your book would have to wait for a while until I finish
reading this sci-fi novel. This is way cooler than evolution and
natural selection! You hear me?

But before I give this
book more kudos, I’d like to give potential readers a heads up. First,
I find this book very challenging to read. Maybe it’s just me, but I find
the scientific lingo–chemistry, biology, natural selection, quantum
physics, logic, computer science, cosmology–used in the book hard to
grasp. I had to re-read passages just for the scientific description to
sink in. In short, it’s very technical, at least for a layperson like
me.

However, the plot of the book is so juicy and
mind-expanding that the technical jargon did not stop me from reading
and reading some more. The book is not action packed. So if you’re into
action novels, you’ll be disappointed. It’s a thinking novel–a
consciousness-expanding novel with a sci-fi twist. The Wikipedia entry described it as exploring ”quantum ontology
via the various philosophical aspects of artificial life and
simulations of intelligence.” Central to the plot is the author’s
explanation of Dust Theory. Here’s the plot summary. I told you it’s geeky

“Paul
Durham keeps making Copies of himself: software simulations of his own
brain and body which can be run in virtual reality, albeit seventeen
times more slowly than real time. He wants them to be his guinea pigs
for a set of experiments about the nature of artificial intelligence,
time, and causality, but they keep changing their mind and baling out
on him, shutting themselves down.

“Maria Deluca
is an Autoverse addict; she’s unemployed and running out of money, but
she can’t stop wasting her time playing around with the cellular
automaton known as the Autoverse, a virtual world that follows a simple
set of mathematical rules as its “laws of physics”.

“Paul
makes Maria a very strange offer: he asks her to design a seed for an
entire virtual biosphere able to exist inside the Autoverse, modelled
right down to the molecular level. The job will pay well, and will
allow her to indulge her obsession. There has to be a catch, though,
because such a seed would be useless without a simulation of the
Autoverse large enough to allow the resulting biosphere to grow and
flourish — a feat far beyond the capacity of all the computers in the
world.”

This is book was written to stimulate and tickle the transhumanist in you. And as a self-described ignorantselfishsingularitarian, it succeeded in stimulating the transhumanist in me. It’s a must-read for transhumanist peeps.

Permutation
City takes transhumanism to the quantum level; to the depths of
consciousness itself. Forget the debates about God, religion,
evolution, natural selection, and intelligent design, for a while. This
book takes all of those polarizing topics and weaves them together in a
grand thought experiment. It’s fluffier than fluffy

If you’ve read it already, I’d like to hear what you think about the
book. If you haven’t read it yet, go pick it up and let me know what
you think as soon as you’ve finished reading it.

Greg Egan is my new favorite sci-fi author. I’m looking forward to reading more of his consciousness-expanding books.

(image via Wikipedia)