The BEST Science Fiction Book YOU HAVEN'T READ

This sci-fi book instantly became an all-time favourite and I think more readers would enjoy it's mind blowing ideas and concepts.

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Book:
Permutation City by Greg Egan

Indie Books:

00:00 - Intro
00:21 - Premise
00:46 - Who Will Like It?
01:56 - Concepts
05:17 - Characters
06:33 - Writing Style
07:33 - Story
09:00 - Is It Confusing?
10:12 - Final Thoughts
10:38 - 3 Indie Books

#ScienceFiction #Books

[circa]

So glad to see Egan's books getting more visible.

I've been reading him since Quarantine (1992) and only have one other friend to discuss his books with.

PC is great but not my favorite. Diaspora and Incandescence are near the top. His collections are fantastic, too.

Does help if you're in the sciences and love math.

[johnknych]

I loved this book and this is an EXCELLENT, thorough review. Well done. You hit all the key points and did a great job of still acknowledging the weaknesses. Also gave this book a 10/10 and was fist-pumping between chapters. An idea that I’d love to explore more is the stowaways…what they would do after everyone left…

[anotherbibliophilereads]

I agree that Permutation City is an excellent hard science fiction novel. I read it about 12 years ago and loved it. I liked Diaspora even more, read about the same times. Sorry, the details are a bit foggy after such a long time, but I was definitely impressed. His story Wang’s Carpets is also excellent. I’ll be reread that In November.

[alcidenikopol]

Excelent review Jonathan. I note that the Permutation City is part of the Subjective Cosmology cycle, which also includes Quarantine and Distress, which are no less mind blowing

[alexandersobolev]

I read Permutation City by Greg Egan last year. And it was my first introduction to Greg Egan. I really liked it. Since that I've read a few other books by him. I would definitely recommend to start from Permutation City. It's arguably his most approachable book.
Each Greg Egan book is usually dedicated to one or two main concepts either from mathematics or physics, or computer science - especially Artificial intelligence (AI). Currently, I'm reading Quarantine. I believe it's his second most approachable novel after Permutation City. And it's all about some theoretical implications of Schrödinger equation and the so-called wave function, and the collapse of the wave function, and the measurement problem in quantum physics.

[mike.thomas]

I agree that this book is pretty brilliant, but a caution to your viewers: I listened to the Audible version and it had one of the top 3 worst narrators I’ve heard yet. The narrator took me out of the book (quite literally) due to an annoying and repetitious cadence in his delivery where nearly every word was stressed, and almost always the last word of the sentences. Add to that some pretty horrible attempts at Australian and German accents, and it’s a bit of a mess.

So, sadly, my mind would start wandering, then I’d come back wondering what had happened. The worst instance was at the end of the book (last 15 minutes or so) where I found myself pretty confused about what the heck was going on. I was too beaten down by then to re-listen to the last half-hour in order to see what I’d missed.

Despite all that I found myself pretty astonished that it was written in the mid-90s. It has actually aged quite well, IMO, and is especially timely today. Some great ideas are scattered throughout and I find myself wondering just how much I missed.

I’ll need to return to the book with my actual eyes if I try it again.

For non-fiction (though imaginative) background on the concepts in the book, Ray Kurzweil’s “The Age of Intelligent Machines” and “The Age of Spiritual Machines” are good, esp the latter (which came out after “Permutation City”).

[dalejones]

Great review. Thanks for keeping them family friendly. I am getting Hyperion tomorrow based on your enthusiasm and recommendation for it. Looking forward to reading it and looking forward to more videos from you. Thanks

[dinocollins]

another fantastic video!!! This sounds fantastic; I'll have to check it out!

[JohnG]

Permutation City is fantastic. I'm not sure why I've not got round to reading more Greg Egan (I own loads of his books). Good to see it getting some booktube love.

[paulallison]

Great review Jonathan, I am looking for some 10/10 books, it sounds perfect for me. I am a big Hard SF fan so I will move it up my TBR.

[robertoneill]

The final passage in this book always brings tears to my eyes. Tears of sadness, despair and empathy for Maria, but also tears of triumph and joy for the love and adventure her copy faces. I feel sad that "real" Maria has no idea at all of what unfolds in Elysium.
One of my favourite books ❤

[thomasrockhoff]

Speaking of cyberpunk, I'm very surprised I havent seen a Snow Crash review on this channel. Thanks for another good rec though. Sounds like one I need to check out.

[jasonvanniekerk]

I loved the hell out of everything Greg Egan wrote in the 90s, though something about most of his stuff this century has been just a bit less dynamic.

Distress is absolutely my favourite of his novels, and I liked a lot of what Diaspora did with this stuff more than Permutation City, but it was great.

His short story anthologies, though, are concentrated genius.

[AndersSandström-li]

Will finish this during the weekend and really love it so far. Although it´s really hard SF I do think it´s possible to follow the most of all that takes place. And I will definitely pass this one on to my brother, him being a physicist and mathematician, working with software-development:). I think this will be right up his alley and he will for sure be able to follow all the lingo better than me. Also a 10 out of 10 for me.

[anonymes]

Yeah, 'Permutation City' is a corker as are many of his other novels ("Quarantine" Is _very_ cyberpunk for instance). But where Greg Egan _really_ shines IMO is in short stories. His 'Axiomatic' is one of my favourite story collections and it contains at least one of my top 5 stories of all time.

(hard sci-fi fans could do worse than check out his Orthogonal trilogy too. It's basically a fictionalisation of a common physics technique - creating a "toy universe" to see what happens, in this case when you change a single minus to a plus. But it's a pretty significant minus sign :)

[EmpressNoriko]

Definitely intrigued. Got on Amazon and when I saw the Kindle version is currently $3.99, bought it immediately. Currently reading Frankenstein for Halloween. Should say rereading, but as I read it over 40 years ago in high school maybe not. Just a few chapters in and I feel I’ll get more out of it this time. Might start Children of Memory next. It arrived a few days ago.

[RichardJActon]

If you want to explore some of these concepts more I recommend: 'The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth' a 2016 nonfiction book by Robin Hanson.

[stephenmorton]

speaking of Australians, i really enjoyed George Turner back in the 90's. Brain Child is a good place to start.

[Yesica]

Okay, Jonathan, here's another book that sounds intriguing! At this point, I'm pretty sure my TBR has exceeded what can be realistically accomplished in a normal human lifespan. Maybe if I had a billion year lifetime, I could get them all in!

[bookdmb]

Space opera is more my jam but you’ve piqued my interest. Repping hidden gems is one of the cooler things you can do with a BookTube channel.