Attempting Immortality: AI, A-Life, and the Posthuman in Greg Egan's Permutation City

Farnell, Ross. "Attempting Immortality: AI, A-Life, and the Posthuman in Greg Egan's Permutation City." SFS #80 = 26.3 (November 1999): 69-91.[1]

The essay argues that "the combination of 'hard' and 'metaphysical' sf in Greg Egan's Permutation City provides a unique exploration of digital modes of being and immortality." Egan's "use of multiple paraspaces and subjective cosmologies challenges many assumptions regarding objectivity, the body, and identity, in a mediation of philosophy, theology, science, technology, and fantasy. […] Juxtaposing AI Copies with evolved A-Life swarm-like entities, Egan explores the differences between these paradigms in the context of science fiction's quest to 'live forever.'"

Abstract, available online at SFS here[2] and at JSTOR — both as of May 2019 — here.[3]

For swarms, see S. Lem's The Invincible and "The Upside-Down Evolution." Search of this wiki for, "Immortality": [4].

(Maly, 27/06/02; RDE, 03/01/04, 27May19)