Wang's Carpets
Far in the distant, post-human future, the Cater-Zimmermann community set out to refute the theory that the universe is created exclusively for mankind by cloning themselves a thousand times over and sending each copy to a different star within the galaxy. One of the copies of Cater-Zimmermann, Paolo Venetti, arrives at Orpheus; a water-world inhabited by floating mats that perform as a Turing machine.
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2014–2025years
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What Hacker News says
- Greg Egan's work has its share of humans but also some extremely imaginative aliens. I am not sure who can relate to the aliens in Wang's Carpets.
Greg Egan is a very good example of a novelist who is a GOAT but will be dismissed by most critics of lit-fic because "his characters don't have arcs" or some such.
- Add Diaspora by Greg Egan to the simulated minds reading list (the story Wang's Carpets within it is one of my favorites).
- You might be right but...
If this world is a simulation knowing the nature might let us work with it better. Hacking the universe (maybe or maybe not if a simulation). It would in some ways just become an extension of physics (in effect).
This gives me an opportunity to bring up a favorite story of mine.
Wang's Carpets by Greg Egan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang%27s_Carpets
- Highly recommend the short story, ”Wang’s Carpets” by Egan titled in honor of mathematician Hao Wang.
- Greg Egan has some fantastic writing on considering extra-dimensional space. See Wang's Carpets as the basis for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)
- For sci-fi readers that dig aperiodic tiling, Greg Egan wrote a great short story in his book 'Diaspora' about computational wang tiles. http://www.amazon.com/Diaspora-Greg-Egan-ebook/dp/B00E83YOEI (the short story is titled Wang's Carpets, available separately as well, but the whole book is worth buying or checking out from the library).
I hope this is considered on topic. I find fiction, particular that which inspires interest in math/code to always be particularly relevant.
