Permutation city by Greg Egan is at the top of the list of my favorite books. I always try to explain the premise to anybody who will listen. Can't wait to read this one.
Me too, and they always think I'm crazy.
I'd love to hear your explanation. I've tried my hand at explaining it to others in various contexts, but I usually lose my audience pretty quickly.
I’m about 30% through it and it’s really good! I’m having a hard time visualizing what the “hoop” actually looks like. Does anyone who has read it understand it? Or maybe I just need to keep reading and it will be explained.
From the synopsis page, it almost sounds like the River Tethys in the Hyperion Cantos: farcaster portals that join segments in disparate worlds into a single, unbroken, flowing river.
On a tangent, is diaspora any good? I have it but haven’t started reading it.
Yep, it's good. It starts off with a really cool description of the process by which a synthetic mind is created from scratch and thrown into a community of other minds (both synthetic and post-human uploaded consciousnesses). The rest of it was good too, but that was a memorable moment for me.
Dispora is my all time favorite. Highly recommended. I've read it cover to cover twice, and plan to do again soon. Reading diaspora, especially towards the end, feels like expanding my mind to think at a scale that I have really never tried to understand before.
I have some reading time coming up in a few days, Egan's oddities are usually fascinating, and the digital edition is not expensive. So what the heck, thanks, I have bought it.