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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

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/1597805394 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/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450882718&sr=1-1&keywords=blindsite http://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-Watts/dp/0765319640/r...

stuxnet79 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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.

stuxnet79 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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.