Permutation City

The story of a man with a vision—immortality: for those who can afford it is found in cyberspace.In the distant future, technology has made it possible to copy human minds and upload them into computer simulations. Paul Durham keeps making Copies of himself: software simulations of his own brain and body which can be run in virtual reality, albeit seventeen times more slowly than real time.

He wants them to be his guinea pigs for a set of experiments about the nature of artificial intelligence, time, and causality, but they keep changing their mind and baling out on him, shutting themselves down.One day he will launch a seed into cyberspace, from which it will grow into something extraordinary: an entire virtual universe—the Permutation City—larger, more stable, and more real than Earth itself. But first Paul must ask an even more basic question: What is reality?

Can consciousness exist in an artificial environment? And if it can, what does it mean to be human?From the brilliant mind of Greg Egan, Permutation City is a masterpiece of speculative science fiction that explores the deepest questions about consciousness, reality, and what it means to be alive.