Permutation City (1994) Author: Greg Egan Genre: Hard SF / Post-Cyberpunk The Premise: Life as a Copy
The novel's main intellectual driver is the "Dust Hypothesis." Egan challenges the notion that consciousness requires a continuous, physical, hardware-based simulation.
Permutation City explores a near-future where human consciousness can be scanned and simulated in digital form, creating "Copies." These Copies are not mere recordings; they are sentient, subjective, and indistinguishable from their physical, flesh-and-blood originals. Permutation City
Egan suggests that the mathematical data constituting a consciousness exists regardless of the order in which the calculations are performed. Even if a simulation is broken into pieces, scattered across time, and computed in a chaotic, non-continuous way ("dust"), the experience of that conscious self still occurs. Key Narrative Features
Permutation City is available in audible format and is a 1994 John W. Campbell Award winner . If you'd like, I can: the three main plot lines Explain the Dust Theory in simpler terms Permutation City (1994) Author: Greg Egan Genre: Hard
Permutation City is a deep dive into existential, post-humanist questions, ultimately questioning whether a copy is truly "alive" or merely a functional, haunted simulation.
The story follows , a man obsessed with achieving true, eternal immortality for these Copies, who are otherwise doomed to die when their host computer hardware inevitably fails. Core Concept: The "Dust Hypothesis" Even if a simulation is broken into pieces,
A meticulously simulated universe with different physical laws, seeded with life to evolve for billions of years.