Permutation City

By: Greg Egan

Narrated by: 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.

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

Couldn’t get into it

After thoroughly enjoying Schild’s Ladder and some short stories, I was really hoping to get hooked by this, but eventually I just put it down.

I found the early chapters of slog because there were no relatable characters. Everyone was unhappy and desperate to escape from the human condition. The agonizingly slow presentation of the central conceit of permutation city was dragged out and ultimately implausible. I think it could’ve made a fascinating “what if” short story and I stuck it out until they got to see permutation city created and then put it down despite it being our book club choice.

Everyone in this book is utterly alone and I just didn’t care enough to find out what happened with the admittedly very cool alien biology that had been growing in the planet seed carried along in permutation city.

Epstein is a fine narrator and I was impressed by the range of accents consistently held and nimbly switched. The characters were rendered believably and I just wish they had been more likable.

Awful narration makes cerebral story impossible

The narrator repeats the same pattern of intonations every sentence or two.
This is a very cerebral story and would be challenging in the best case, but the narration pushes it over the line of impossible to follow for me.
I really enjoyed one of the author’s other works, so I think it’s really unfair of Audible to do this to him.

SciFi in its purest form

I almost let the negative reviews regarding the narration stop me from buying this; that would’ve been an enormous mistake. It only took a few minutes to acclimate to the narrator’s style and now I couldn’t imagine anyone else performing it.

This book is the epitome of what I personally define as science fiction; I want to experience something that changes the way I see the ‘real world’. This title delivered in a way that I never expected. I am not the same for having experienced it.

If you enjoy thinking about the origins of the Universe, or the possibility of an afterlife and have a casual interest in computing or physics, you’ll love this. I emphasize the ‘casual’ interest qualification. If you have a physics degree or some advanced knowledge of the topics involved, there’s a slight chance you might find the story too fantastic to enjoy. I say ‘slight’ quite deliberately however as the author manages to utilize the futuristic setting very adeptly to create a very believable, immersive story; I almost feel like the story actually happened and I am simply recalling the events.

Five stars all around.