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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

Greg Egan's Permutation City is #1 for me. It's not only a good read, it may be the most important work of late 20th century philosophy. (Among other things, it completely anticipated Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, and totally obviates Bostrom's latest work.)

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Reading Egan's works elevated my standard for what constitutes a truly great novel: "If you don't change as a person after having it read it, it wasn't that great."

Permutation City especially made me see the universe and my part in it in a different light, or perhaps casting a shadow onto it. I'll never be the same person as I was before I had read it.

I am surprised there was no Egan book in the list. He's in the top 5 of hard sci fi authors you should definitely read

The list starts with Project Hail Mary, which is as far from Egan as I can imagine on the science fiction spectrum.

We've got 10 lists with him as well: https://shepherd.com/search/author/1445

You can see how they connected to him there too.

I think Egan is much better known than most (if not all) of the authors in the list. I've heard of Andy Weir and Hugh Howey, but not the particular books listed by them. Conversely I've heard about Permutation City quite often.

Many 'you should read these lists' are just that lists. Usually by the author of the list and things they have read and think you should too. That they missed something is not surprising. Lists like this have an air of authority when they usually boil down to 'things I have seen/read and like/hate'. I use them as interesting things to go thru to see if there is anything I missed.

Wow, I also thought of the work as deeply philosophical. I also read a bunch of other philosophy, and found that Egan's hypothesis overlaps significantly with both Advaita Vedanta and Buddhist concept of soul (pali: puggala). Did anybody else think the same?

That's a great pick! Permutation City is definitely a thought-provoking read. Egan's exploration of consciousness and reality challenges so many assumptions we take for granted.

What's the Bostrom work it obviates? I'd be kind of surprised if he never read the Egan -- it was part of the background to extropian culture back then.

"Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World"

A book about what to do with life in the face of boundless possibilities, and when just about everything important has been figured out. I recall that this was a significant plot point in Permutation City -- and Egan answered the question more elegantly than Bostrom did.

Thanks. Could be, I haven't read that one.

I'm also interested in that remark about Bostrom. What is the relation?

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