Permutation City

I have a couple I would highly recommend: The first is Stanislaw Lem's "Imaginary Magnitude." Most stories there are written as sort of prefaces to non-existent technical/scientific books, papers, articles, etc. The last one, Golem XIV, goes a bit beyond and includes an entire lecture. The content is incredibly detailed and technical, Lem knew his Technology and Science for sure, so sometimes it's incredibly accurate and prophetic. Even though it was written in the 1970's, Lem was already describing things that look uncannily like neural networks, emergent communication systems, and machine-generated literature, decades before they existed. And... most of them are also really really funny. Here are small summaries that ChatGPT helped me write for some of the stories there: ---- Eruntics ---- A faux-scientific introduction to a field studying “erunts”: biological (or semi-biological) agents, think bacteria/neural colonies, that can learn to read, write, and communicate. These bacterial colonies learn to communicate through several learning iterations across many mutations and generations, much like, say, Neural Networks, and they even develop their own proto-language as they evolve.…

I consolidated the comments for my reference later. Someone else might also find it useful: # Fiction Books Recommended for Programmers (HN Thread 46128404) ## Adrian Tchaikovsky - *Children of Time* — Science Fiction (Evolution, Space Opera) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-time) ## Rick Cook — Wizardry Series - *Wizard’s Bane* — Fantasy, Programming/Magic Mashup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112616.Wizard_s_Bane - *Wizardry Series (overview)* https://www.goodreads.com/series/43084-wiz ## James P. Hogan - *Inherit the Stars* — Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/743568.Inherit_the_Stars - *Code of the Lifemaker* — Sci-Fi, Artificial Life https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifem... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296722.Code_of_the_Lifemaker) - *The Two Faces of Tomorrow* — AI, Hard Science Fiction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218017.The_Two_Faces_of_Tomorrow) ## D. F. Jones — Colossus Trilogy - *Colossus* — AI, Classic Sci-Fi Thriller…

Permutation City by Greg Egan.

For me, some of the best books I read this year, are: - Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, I have seen many narratives on the fault at the core of current values and goals of human civilization, but never saw a laid out alternative. Whatever it might be, I like the book for attempting at presenting one. - Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, I like this book for extremely original thoughts. This books was so thin (~200 pages), yet it was grand. I also wrote a review [0]. - The Happiness Trap by Russ Hariss, was very helpful to me in sorting through some things. Very practical book. - Anathem by Neal Stephenson, one of the most original book, and probably the best one by Stephenson. Very original ideas, mind expanding. - Permutation City by Greg Egan, this book raised the standard for possibly all SciFi book that I will read in the future. Extremely original and grand ideas. - The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, another book that lays out alternatives to what is now considered mainstream.…

Permutation city, Greg Egan Dictionnaire philosophique, Voltaire The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek The ICU Book, Paul Marino

Perhaps a standard list but: Hyperion, Deepness in the Sky, Snow crash, Permutation City, Exhalation and other Ted Chiang

* Greg Egan’s short story collections, Diaspora, and Permutation City. Fair warning, Egan puts the “hard” in “hard sci-fi”. * Haven’t finished the Expanse final trilogy, but I really enjoyed the first two. * The Wool series * Project Hail Mary, for story reasons I’d recommend the audio book. * We Are Bob trilogy, fourth book is garbage. * Old Man’s War * The Culture Series by Ian Banks * If you enjoyed Seveneves, and thus can tolerate Stephenson’s consistent habit to drop the ball in the last 20% of his books, Diamond Age is enjoyable.

A few lesser known but great sci-if books: -Permutation City -Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect -The Egg (Andy Weir short story)

Greg Egan's works, mainly permutation City and Distress. These books go far beyond just LLMs and Greg Egan's novels really put the "hard" in hard sci-fi. But they describe a world where compute is extremely important. The first half of Permutation city especially covers this very well. Distress delves more into biotech and particle physics, but has its share of AI stuff. FWIW, Egan has a Twitter account and is mostly not that gung-ho about the current LLMs.

What an existentially depressing book though, at least for me. It was wonderful, and worth reading more than once simply because it helps absorb more of its deeply complex aspects, but without a doubt it creates an unusual emotional impact.

I believe that's Permutation City. I don't remember the exact details from the book but there's definitely some similar things in it.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem Permutation City by Greg Egan Ubik by Philip K. Dick

of course Permutation City, I am confused why anyone named that book yet.

Permutation City is probably the best hard sci-fi novel I've ever read.

His Permutation City is also good.

Highlights: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality When Three Worlds Collide Permutation City The Story of Human Body Incognito: the secret life of your brain

I read quite a few others that have been mentioned here, but I finally read two that hard sci-fi books that should appeal to the Hacker News crowd Permutation City: People can run simulations of themselves or entirely migrate their consciousness into computer programs, but existence is often limited to the amount of computation that you can afford, leading to slow existences that stretch time into fractions of realtime. That premise had me hooked, but the book has fantastic thought provoking plot points throughout. Highly recommended. http://www.amazon.com/Permutation-City-Novel-Greg-Egan/dp/15... (http://www.amazon.com/Permutation-City-Novel-Greg-Egan/dp/1597805394) Blindsight: Amazing first alien encounter book that should be read by everyone that is a fan of the genre. Memorable cast of characters...the Vampires are really interesting. All kinds of introductory scientific concepts throughout. Entertaining and educational. http://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-Watts/dp/0765319640/r... (http://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-Watts/dp/0765319640/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450882718&sr=1-1&keywords=blindsite)

I'm sure there are many, but a few that jump to mind, in no particular order, and spanning both fiction and non-fiction: The Selfish Gene - Dawkins A New Kind of Science - Wolfram The Singularity is Near - Kurzweil Gödel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies - Hofstadter Atlas Shrugged - Rand The Fountainhead - Rand Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin Time Reborn - Lee Smolin Ambient Findability - Peter Morville Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software - Steven Johnson Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age - Duncan Watts Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life - Albert-laszlo Barabasi Artificial Life - Steven Levy The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman not a book, but the various writings of Douglas Engelbart - http://www.dougengelbart.org/library/library.html Glasshouse - Charles Stross Permutation City - Greg Egan Neuromancer - William Gibson The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky…

My two cents: The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins - makes you look at living beings as software, and at the world as an immense optimization algorithm. Permutation City by Greg Egan - the perfectly rational idea that the mind is computable is rife with apparently unsolvable paradoxes. Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Maths, logic, patterns, artificial intelligence, beauty, art and self-referentiality.

Greg Egan's Permutation City plays some novel games with reality.

Permutation City by Greg Egan A 1994 science fiction novel that explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, via various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City I was impressed that the book begin with a description of the concept of Fovea Rendering that is all the rage now with Virtual Reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging

Yes, the first few chapters were mind-bogglingly good. Loses its punch towards the end, but the first two thirds floored me.

Permutation City, by Greg Egan. It's one of my favourites.

Permutation City by Greg Egan really changed my personal cosmology

Greg Egan - Permutation City Peter Watts - Blindsight

Neal Stephenson, Anathem Iain M Banks, Use of Weapons Greg Egan, Diaspora and Permutation City Frank Herbert, Dune Kim Stanley Robinson, the Mars trilogy Vernon Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky [Note to Hollywood: can we please have a Culture movie?]

Permutation City by Greg Egan takes the cake this year in fiction. Although a very close second would be the Hardcover Penguin Classic's edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley mainly for it's deftly abridged version and preface which gave a new dimension to the story for me. Non-fiction would either be Mortality by the late Christopher Hitchens or "On Numbers and Games" by John H. Conway.

My two favorites are Permutation City by Greg Egan and The Golden Age by John C. Wright (actually that one's a trilogy). I hear good things about Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. I've only read one (The Player of Games) and while it was enjoyable it was still sort of meh, if that makes sense... (I've got Excession in my queue and I suspect I'll enjoy it more.) While it's more in the realm of science-fantasy, you might enjoy this alternate universe imagining of the Harry Potter story: http://hpmor.com/

For mind-expanding, post-singularity hard sci-fi consider anything by Greg Egan. I'd start with Permutation City, or one of his short story collections.

Permutation City by Greg Egan

Second Egan, for 'Permutation City' and his short stories (in 'Axiomatic', especially). Also, Greg Bear's 'Blood Music' inspired me both with its vision and its jumbling of genres, especially given its publication date (1985).

I came directly by searching Egan in the comment tree :) Permutation city (or any of the Egan's short stories such as 'Closer') is probably the one of the most intense mind blowing experiences I ever had (at least regarding books), it shouldn't even be called "SciFi" it is... something else BTW: Diaspora is the next book in my list.... I hope not to be dissapointed.

I can't imagine why nobody even mentioned Greg Egan so far. Reading Permutation City left me in a dazzled state for days because of the sheer number of reality-altering concepts it throws at you in such a short span. If by inspiring, you mean something that will give even the most ardent SF addict future shock, then his books are absolutely what you're looking for. His BS in Math and background in programming give him a great perspective on some of the most challenging mysteries of the universe -- and his work still manages to be the hardest SF I've read. Check out Diaspora if you like what you see in Permutation City.