PE[R]M[UT]ATION[CITY]

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Apr 04 2001 - 23:35:26 MDT


At 12:48 AM 4/5/01 EDT, Spudboy wrote:

><< And as explored in vivid detail by Greg Egan in _Permutation City_

>for me, this must be a 'pearls before swine situation'. I have
>read and re-read the book several times, and just have trouble connecting to
>it. Perhaps SI's will one day give tests on it to see if a human is
>downloadable? REMIT NOT PAUCITY.

PERMUTATION CITY opens with a (rather bad) quasi poem comprising two
stanzas of 10 lines, starting with

Into a mute crypt, I

Chapter headings are like this:

Rip, tie, cut toy man

Remit not paucity

A notable exception to the algorithm is

Rut City

SPOILER

The lines are all permutations of the letters in... ta rah... PERMUTATION
CITY.

The `poem' is a list found in `a discarded notepad' in a madhouse in 2045.
There's probably a clue in their number as to the number of iterations of
the protagonist's virtual life (I think; it's years since I read the book),
and therefore the ontological status of the main narrative.

Damien Broderick



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