Mare Somniorum

This book has been described as “Wonderful mind-expanding stuff”, and “a real trip”. That’ll be the gentle take on it. “Permutation City” takes on the concept of self-aware entities that aren’t based on the biology we know. They’re computer programs, or life evolved in simplified virtual world. The computer programs are copies of people, in effect, they are the very people they were scanned / copied from, and they’re aware that they are just that, copies. Exact copies at that, from a mental and memory perspective. They remember everything up to the scan. They are copies in the true sense of the word.

However, this also includes being self-aware. They retain a concept of identity, they retain a self they cling to in various degrees — for as your mind is a program, you can alter yourself as you please. You can remove memories, implant new ones, instill desire, remove passions, you can recreate yourself as you see fit. And you are self-aware during the entire process.

The question some copies ask when this is done, is who you are once you’ve altered yourself directly. If you remove the bad memories that torment your life, a simple enough task, do you remain the same entity? When there is no physical body to easily pin identity to, what does indeed happen when your memories aren’t your own anymore? What else defines you? As one conversation in the book goes, as one character contemplates splitting himself into distinct entities using experiences that he has imposed on himself over a long time:

“The people the software creates when you’re gone won’t be you in any way.”
“They’ll be happy, won’t they? From time to time? For their own strange reasons?”
“Yes. But –”
“That’s all I am, now. That’s all that defines me. So when they’re happy, they’ll be me.”

Egan stated in an interview that he wanted to make people rethink the way they thought of AIs, that they were more than props for a story. I can safely say he succeeded with me. But as if that wasn’t enough, the work itself moves beyond the “simple” bit of questioning identity. Reality is questioned, causality is questioned, the very concepts we hold as time and space are neatly peeled away.

The result is a head trip. A patchwork of realities woven together with passion, a steady hand and a storyline that drives you on. The writing itself is good, and in a sense it’s good that isn’t more elaborate. There are enough things to give you a headache in this book, you really don’t need the language to be dancing around in your head to boot. This is about the concepts, the story and their interplay.

Oh, and the book is pure magic with anagrams and pattern concepts. It’s a head trip that really deserves to be read.