Permutation City
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Narrated by:
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Adam Epstein
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By:
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Greg Egan
About this listen
The good news is that you have just awakened into Eternal Life. You are going to live forever. Immortality is a reality. A medical miracle? Not exactly.
The bad news is that you are a scrap of electronic code. The world you see around you, the you that is seeing it, has been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. You are a Copy that knows it is a copy.
The good news is that there is a way out. By law, every Copy has the option of terminating itself, and waking up to normal flesh-and-blood life again. The bail-out is on the utilities menu. You pull it down...The bad news is that it doesn't work. Someone has blocked the bail-out option. And you know who did it. You did. The other you. The real you. The one that wants to keep you here forever.
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Greg Egan concocts a fascinating and thought-provoking novel that explores the role of technology in creating alternate realities, blurring the lines between what is "real" and what isn't. In this future world of globalized economy and devastating climate change, Paul Durham has scanned multiple "Copies" of himself into his computer and becomes entangled with Maria, an Autoverse aficionado. Egan raises interesting questions about artificial intelligence and morality within a technological world, and it's a high concept that is brought to life by Adam Epstein, whose measured performance and faintly rumbling voice adds a palpable and dramatic intrigue to Permutation City.
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- Length: 21 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically - it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him. Society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers and mass-marketed psychedelic drugs.
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perfect audio experience
- By Darryl on 03-24-14
By: John Brunner, and others
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Invasion
- Alien Invasion, Book 1
- By: Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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They are coming. The countdown has begun. First visible only as blips on a telescope image, the discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter's orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with Internet) has already shown the populace what is coming.
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"terrible, absolutely terrible"
- By Andre M. Nel on 08-02-18
By: Sean Platt, and others
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Variable Star
- By: Robert A. Heinlein, Spider Robinson
- Narrated by: Spider Robinson
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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At his death in 1988, Robert A. Heinlein left a legacy that almost single-handedly defined modern science fiction. But one of Heinlein's masterpieces was never finished. In 1955, he began work on Variable Star, a powerful and passionate tale of two young lovers driven apart by pride, power, and the vastness of interstellar time and space. Now, the Heinlein estate has authorized award-winning author Spider Robinson to expand his outline into a full-length novel. And the result is vintage Heinlein.
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Spider WHO
- By Randall on 04-25-09
By: Robert A. Heinlein, and others
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Expendable
- League of Peoples, Book 1
- By: James Alan Gardner
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Peoples, there is no war, little crime, and life is sacred...unless you're an Explorer. The ugly, the flawed, the misfit, the deformed, they are the unwanted, flung to the farthest corners of the galaxy to investigate hostile planets and strange, vicious creatures. Out there, there are a thousand different - and terrible - ways to die.
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FU@@ING EXPLORERS
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 03-06-15
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The Medusa Chronicles
- By: Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Howard Falcon almost lost his life in an accident as the first human astronaut to explore the atmosphere of Jupiter - and a combination of human ingenuity and technical expertise brought him back. But he is no longer himself. Instead he has been changed into an augmented human: part man, part machine, and exceptionally capable.
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Almost stopped listening. Glad I didn't.
- By cek on 08-21-16
By: Stephen Baxter, and others
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Fleet of Worlds
- 200 Years Before the Discovery of the Ringworld
- By: Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Fleet of Worlds takes a closer look at Human-Puppeteer (Citizen) relations and the events leading up to Niven's first Ringworld novel. Kirsten Quinn-Kovacks is among the best and brightest of her people. She gratefully serves the gentle race that rescued her ancestors from a dying starship, gave them a world, and nurtures them still. If only the Citizens knew where Kirsten's people came from.
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Hurrah!
- By Bruce on 01-25-08
By: Larry Niven, and others
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The Post-Human Omnibus
- Books 1-4
- By: David Simpson
- Narrated by: Ray Chase
- Length: 24 hrs and 54 mins
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Before he was Oldtimer, he was Craig Emilson, a young doctor,sucked into military service at the outbreak of World War III. Enlisting to become a Special Forces suborbital paratrooper, Craig is selected to take part in the most important mission in American military history, a sortie into enemy territory to eliminate the world's first strong artificial intelligence.
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Man, I really wanted to like this book
- By Consumer on 04-29-15
By: David Simpson
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The Dreaming Void
- Void Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Peter F. Hamilton
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 35 mins
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AD 3580. The Intersolar Commonwealth has spread through the galaxy to over a thousand star systems. It is a culture of rich diversity with a place for everyone. A powerful navy protects it from any hostile species that may lurk among the stars. For Commonwealth citizens, even death has been overcome.
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What can I say
- By Randall on 05-08-18
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A good book ruined by a poor (and strange) reading
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Good Egan Hard SF story near ruined by the narator
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Not What I Hoped For
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Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
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The Life Engineered begins in the year 3594, when humanity is little more than a memory, a legend of the distant past - destined to reappear. Capeks, a race of artificial creatures originally created by humans, have inherited the galaxy and formed a Utopian civilization built on the shared goal of tirelessly working to prepare for their makers' return.
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Brilliant
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What listeners say about Permutation City
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael G Kurilla
- 04-21-19
Math and physics collide to create a universe
Greg Egan's Permutation City is an early attempt to offer the potential for "uploading" oneself into a virtual world. With sufficient computing power, which is always limiting, scanning an individual, allows for their existence in this virtual world. The relative slowness of this existence limits its utility for all but the super-rich as well as the terminally ill. Against this backdrop, a plan, that appears initially as a scam, concerns creating a virtual world unencumbered by speed or limited by computing power. What begins as a demonstration of virtual reality as a mechanism for evolution offers the possibility of unlimited existence as well as universal collapse.
Egan plays off the simple computer game of life to add more computing power and complexity to offer a more realistic virtual world. Underlying this thesis is that math and physics are essentially equivalent such that any mathematically consistent universe construction that can exist will exist once created. As such, once complexity reaches a critical level, a self sustaining universe is possible. At the same time, Egan suggests that alternative viewpoints on the underlying structure of the universe can cause problems if those differing viewpoints are each mathematically consistent.
The narration is reasonable with a decent range of characters and gender distinction. Pacing is a bit on the slow side.
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- jimlkport
- 01-05-20
Narration is unbelievably poor!
I now realize I should have believed the other reviews. The narration is terrible, stopped listening after an hour, fast forwarded to later chapter, not any better. Returned the book and got a refund.
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- Nicholas Adams
- 01-11-22
Curious story, abysmal narrator
Narrator is godawful. He used the exact same cadence for nearly every sentence, and once you notice it, it’s all you hear. Also, perhaps the worst Australian accent I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m sorry, this narrator should do some reflecting on his performance here. Perhaps take some notes.
Listen to Revelation Space or the culture novels instead. The narrators of those are just exquisite. Read this one in hard-copy.
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- Sean B.
- 11-03-22
Deep creation.
There was a lot of very deep construction of foundational physics but the structure was difficult for audio.
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- Luiz Daniel de Campos
- 03-14-24
Horrible narration
Narration was so bad I couldn't continue. A pity, as the story seemed quite interesting
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- Brux
- 10-07-16
Narrator provides a surmountable challenge
Many reviewers point out that the narrator's performance of this audiobook leaves much to be desired. True, but I found his reading to be passable enough at x1.25 speed and was able to enjoy the content of the book.
That said, some of Egan's very complex ideas are hard to grasp via audio only. I found it useful to visit his Dust Theory FAQ page to help me sit and contemplate his ideas.
Overall, the ideas are fascinating, but the character's motivations are murky. As with a lot of idea-driven science fiction, character development takes a hit. Sometimes, as in Charles Stross' work, flat or unrelateable characters make it hard to enjoy the otherwise good hard science fiction. Somehow, the brilliance and audacity of Eagan's ideas overshadow the books other shortcomings.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Joshua Rodgers
- 09-20-20
SciFi in its purest form
I almost let the negative reviews regarding the narration stop me from buying this; that would’ve been an enormous mistake. It only took a few minutes to acclimate to the narrator’s style and now I couldn’t imagine anyone else performing it.
This book is the epitome of what I personally define as science fiction; I want to experience something that changes the way I see the ‘real world’. This title delivered in a way that I never expected. I am not the same for having experienced it.
If you enjoy thinking about the origins of the Universe, or the possibility of an afterlife and have a casual interest in computing or physics, you’ll love this. I emphasize the ‘casual’ interest qualification. If you have a physics degree or some advanced knowledge of the topics involved, there’s a slight chance you might find the story too fantastic to enjoy. I say ‘slight’ quite deliberately however as the author manages to utilize the futuristic setting very adeptly to create a very believable, immersive story; I almost feel like the story actually happened and I am simply recalling the events.
Five stars all around.
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- Chris Baggott Jr
- 04-07-21
Egan always delivers amazing SF.
The narrator has a bit of an odd cadence, and some of his voices for the characters are indistinguishable from others. Story is solid and provokes thought on the idea of mind transfer and whether or not quantum states can find themselves in an uncollapsed eigenstate.
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- me too.
- 07-22-23
good, maybe not as good as I remembered
pretty mediocre performance, with several technical mispronunciations.
I read the paperback in the 90's when it came out, and wanted to review it two decades later. was just a bit of a slog, actually.
wild ideas throughout, minimal characterization
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- Charles R. Twardy
- 04-26-24
Couldn’t get into it
After thoroughly enjoying Schild’s Ladder and some short stories, I was really hoping to get hooked by this, but eventually I just put it down.
I found the early chapters of slog because there were no relatable characters. Everyone was unhappy and desperate to escape from the human condition. The agonizingly slow presentation of the central conceit of permutation city was dragged out and ultimately implausible. I think it could’ve made a fascinating “what if” short story and I stuck it out until they got to see permutation city created and then put it down despite it being our book club choice.
Everyone in this book is utterly alone and I just didn’t care enough to find out what happened with the admittedly very cool alien biology that had been growing in the planet seed carried along in permutation city.
Epstein is a fine narrator and I was impressed by the range of accents consistently held and nimbly switched. The characters were rendered believably and I just wish they had been more likable.
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