A meticulously simulated universe with different physical laws, seeded with life to evolve for billions of years.
The story follows , a man obsessed with achieving true, eternal immortality for these Copies, who are otherwise doomed to die when their host computer hardware inevitably fails. Core Concept: The "Dust Hypothesis"
Durham launches a virtual world built on the "Autoverse," a system allowing for infinite, self-replicating computational nodes, promising infinite life to its inhabitants. Permutation City
Permutation City (1994) Author: Greg Egan Genre: Hard SF / Post-Cyberpunk The Premise: Life as a Copy
It is considered one of the ultimate explorations of digital consciousness, merging complex physics and computer science. Permutation City (1994) Author: Greg Egan Genre: Hard
Written in 1994, it portrays a highly realistic, terrifyingly plausible 2050.
Egan suggests that the mathematical data constituting a consciousness exists regardless of the order in which the calculations are performed. Even if a simulation is broken into pieces, scattered across time, and computed in a chaotic, non-continuous way ("dust"), the experience of that conscious self still occurs. Key Narrative Features Even if a simulation is broken into pieces,
If a human brain can be simulated, the "pattern" of that mind is what matters, not the specific physical substrate.
