I'm now in the "Permutation City" section of Permutation City. I really like the Autoverse - the concept of the ever-expanding cellular automata didn't put me off but it also didn't give that sense of mounting excitement of "oh I love this move" that I sometimes get with sci-fi concepts. I accept its premise and am interested in what else the book wants to do granted that concept. The shape of the books been surprising, as well as some of the characters involved - surprising he felt it was worth focusing on these characters (I guess here I'm mostly thinking of the Solipsists and the wealthy retiree). I'm curious if they're building towards something. Even if not it's not something I'm mad about or bumping against, just curious. It's not quite Delaney level of digression where the choices seem totally unplotted/unjustifiable but also great. But it's something in that territory of "really?" and "huh"./ Do I feel any more connections to current LLM progress? Not especially... except again the general feeling of "we/I should be doing more with cellular automata".