Can’t even remember where I saw a recommendation for this, think it was on Hacker News, so I was expecting something with a technical/logical angle; Permutation City is that and much more. A real brain-frazzler of a book, the layers deepen as the chapters progress.
Set in a future where the wealthy can be recreated in a VR world after their death, the story revolves around Paul Durham who has an idea of how these Copies can be protected from the underlying computers being unplugged or reallocated. This involves a more fundamental recreation of an artificial universe, built not on algorithms to mimic the real world but on its own set of fundamental laws.
These very much echo Conway’s Game Of Life, where very trivial fundamental laws can result in very complex patterns, motion, and indeed logical systems. People have built the most incredible things within this system; a digital clock, a working computer… the stunning brilliance and creativity of humans never fails to astound.
The descriptions of the workings of these worlds are very technical and do not patronise the reader; for a book published in 1994 some of the concepts are impressively predictive. For example, cloud computing, auctions for compute, and moving computations between data centres to find the lowest cost are all outlined.
The philosophical angles are numerous also. There are themes on life and death, the blurred lines between a virtual world and the real world, indeed what is the nature of reality, of self… there really are so many angles all of which give pause for thought, which is a little tricky as the plot needs your full attention.
You’ll need to concentrate but it’s worth it.
