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Richard's Reviews > Permutation City
Permutation City
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What a strange book. The author takes a very strange idea (sorry, no spoilers) to a logical conclusion — but that concept requires some long and abstruse discussions that verge on analytic philosophy.
As one of my fellow readers points out, the underlying story would probably barely flesh out a novella. A huge portion of the content here is in the defense of an existentially suspect creation.
This won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, but I think it maybe should have been given the Philip K. Dick Award (it was a nominee). The plot definitely requires some mindbending (it's twist on reality distortion was just a tiny bit reminiscent of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, I think).
Still, I can only give it the "I liked it" three stars; the ratio of fascination with the strange ideas to frustration with the slow pace just didn't top out too high.
Book selection for the Hard SciFi group (aka the Yahoo hardsf group) for the month of July, 2010.
As one of my fellow readers points out, the underlying story would probably barely flesh out a novella. A huge portion of the content here is in the defense of an existentially suspect creation.
This won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, but I think it maybe should have been given the Philip K. Dick Award (it was a nominee). The plot definitely requires some mindbending (it's twist on reality distortion was just a tiny bit reminiscent of Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, I think).
Still, I can only give it the "I liked it" three stars; the ratio of fascination with the strange ideas to frustration with the slow pace just didn't top out too high.
Book selection for the Hard SciFi group (aka the Yahoo hardsf group) for the month of July, 2010.
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Reading Progress
April 17, 2010
– Shelved
April 17, 2010
– Shelved as:
scifi
April 17, 2010
– Shelved as:
singularity
June 28, 2010
– Shelved as:
bookclub
July 6, 2010
–
Started Reading
July 7, 2010
– Shelved as:
scifi-cognition
July 7, 2010
–
Finished Reading
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rated it 5 stars
Jul 18, 2010 07:20AM
I'm a bit shocked every time I see you write "the Hard SciFi group". It's hard SF! See http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/... for a discussion. Yes, I'm totally aware it's a nitpicking, trivial distinction.
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People love their labels, don't they? Sometimes I can understand that — usage of the N-word, for instance, stood as a continuing reminder of continuing oppression.Back in the seventies (or was that the eighties), trekkies got all upset and insisted that they be called "trekkers". That seemed silly and arbitrary, since neither term was laden with significant meaning to outsiders.
I found it quite annoying when the term "hacker" was increasingly used to indicate a black-hat programmer, since the hacking tradition went way back into basic electronics, and simply meant someone who could reliably create workable solutions, even if they weren't of the prettiest or most efficient design.
But the whole sci-fi, scifi, sf debate — leaves me terminally bored. Like the trekkie thing, no one in the world knows or cares about the distinction beyond that small community, so I don't see any reason to think about it.
But I do have two reasons to use scifi (or sci-fi) that aren't mentioned in that brief article. First, it *sounds* like a word. If I'm talking to my sister about what we're reading, I might mention a book and say "oh, but it's scifi, so you're probably not going to be interested." If "ess-eff" is substituted into that vocalization, most people won't know what is being dismissed.
Second: I live in San Francisco! Ess-Eff has a very dominant meaning, as you can imagine. If I thought "science fiction" every time I saw "SF" here in "SF", life could get very confusing. I mean, how many towns have an entire newsweekly covering science fiction, as our "SF Weekly" apparently does? :-)
But: next time I'm attending a book club or reading at our premier "speculative fiction" bookstore (Borderlands books), I'll ask some of the staff. Or maybe some of the writers and publishers I might see at SFinSF.
