Greg Egan
Permutation City (1994)
Reviewed: 1996-04-01

Paralleling his previous novel Quarantine both in internal structure and scope, but dealing with an entirely different albeit equally intriguing concept, Egan's Permutation City again explores the concept of subjective cosmology. Following through with the logical consequences of its premise to extremes, Egan ties knots into the brains of his protagonists and readers with this work of metaphysical hard SF.

Mid-21st century. Networked computers are everywhere, telecommuting and virtual reality permeate much of common life. Advances in medical technology and computing allow the creation of "Copies": a human body is scanned and its every (desired) function emulated on a computer, resulting in a self-conscious virtual person, who starts out as an exact duplicate of the flesh-and-blood man or woman it has been derived from. Those who can afford it have themselves scanned when their death is approaching and live on as Copies in a virtual world, with tenuous connections to the outside, and the ability to modify themselves and their surroundings at will. Egan nicely examines the social and personal consequences of this technology.

Maria Deluca is a contract programmer. She lives in Sidney, Australia, but the network allows her to work wherever her services are needed. She is also an Autoverse addict. Based on cellular automata, the Autoverse is the simulation of a small universe, different from the real world, much simpler, but still with self-consistent laws. There are Autoverse physics, chemistry, and there is even a primitive form of life, Autobacterium lamberti. It is Maria's private ambition to prove that Autoverse life can be subject to the process of evolution through natural selection.

Paul Durham is the man who will join both developments in the endeavor of his life. Starting from simple insights into the nature of consciousness, Durham sets out to create literal immortality in a new permutation of the universe. When the circumstances force him to fully reveal his intentions to Maria, she shrugs them off as the delusions of a man insane and only continues her work with him because it allows her to earn the money required to scan her dying mother. Although Maria is incredulous, there is no logical flaw in Durham's plan, but will his hypothesis about the character of the universe prove true?


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