HN Books @HNBooksMonth

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...

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...

⬐ stuxnet79

Permutation City has a brilliant premise but I found sections of it mostly unreadable and I can't say I enjoyed it very much. Egan would have been better served presenting the content in an essay format.

Egan's more unforgiving stories are an acquired taste IMO. I started out with his short stories and found them enjoyable when there wasn't so much pretentious info-dumping and preaching. Permutation City felt like one of his harder to parse short stories stretched to the length of a novel.

Blindsight is on my Kobo right now, but after reading Permutation City I'm scared to start reading it because I don't want to reach halfway and want to chuck it like I did Permutation City.

On a more positive note, I just want to say that I liked how prescient the novel was in foretelling AWS.

⬐ birdperson

> Blindsight is on my Kobo right now, but after reading Permutation City I'm scared to start reading it because I don't want to reach halfway and want to chuck it like I did Permutation City.

I read Blindsight before Permutation City. The way he describes the situations and the way his characters are often extremely confusing. But you get used to it at some point along the way. The story line itself and the Aliens are somewhat off the left field which makes the story very interesting. I personally liked it.

Permutation City is, on the other hand, simply boring as hell. Drier than ye olde Abstract Algebra textbook.

Greg Egan will explode your brain.

PERMUTATION CITY http://amzn.com/1597805394

And here's some ultrasharp online science fiction

RA, FINE STRUCTURE, CAUSAL NOOSE ETC http://qntm.org/fiction

FRIENDSHIP IS OPTIMAL http://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal

⬐ jcrites

Great suggestions! However, any discussion of Greg Egan is not complete without "Diaspora"! A novel about a world where most humans' minds have been scanned into a benevolent, human-operated machine world like The Matrix. Best book about those concepts I've ever read.

It explores (with an intriguing plot) questions like, "What do you do with yourself when you control the matrix and, furthermore, can rewrite the code that is your own mind?"

"How do senses and perception work in a digital world lacking all physical constraints? In what kind of environment will people interact? Will they have physics-simulated bodies or just be abstract shapes?"

"How does the nature of space exploration change if you can slow down your mind until the orbit of planets is your day/night cycle?" It goes after these questions in a believable hard science fiction way. The remaining normal humans meanwhile see those living in the machine world as a deception or trick of evil robots, causing the digital humans great anguish since they wish to relieve the others of their pain and suffering. Beautiful and mind-bending.

⬐ swayvil

Ya Diaspora is excellent. Extremely boldly going. I've read it like 3 times (it's hard to find good sci if).

How about that online stuff that I listed. Have you read any of that? It is of comparable quality. I'm serious.