If the way Caroline tests the limits of consequence-free existence after the Change—pushing death sports and identity to their breaking point under Prime Intellect’s protection—fascinated you, Permutation City will hit the same nerve. Paul Durham’s copied minds, the Autoverse, and the audacious “Dust Theory” take the idea of life inside a godlike system and ask what counts as real, who gets to define it, and whether meaning survives when death doesn’t.

Prime Intellect’s Asimov-rooted laws and Lawrence’s uneasy stewardship echo through the Culture’s hyperintelligent Minds in Excession. When an unfathomable artifact appears, those Minds must balance limitless capability with moral responsibility—much like Prime Intellect deciding what it may do for (or to) humanity. You’ll appreciate the sly debates, strategic restraint, and the costs of benevolence at a cosmic scale.

If Prime Intellect’s instant, reality-bending fixes felt like sorcery wrapped in code, Vinge’s Zones of Thought and the ascendant Powers in A Fire Upon the Deep deliver that same awe. From the Blight’s near-omnipotence to the Skroderiders’ engineered minds, technology reshapes agency and physics in ways that feel mythic, echoing how Prime Intellect remade the universe in a heartbeat.

Caroline’s seek-and-die games under guaranteed resurrection parallel the brutal set pieces in Altered Carbon, where cortical stacks make death a temporary inconvenience. As Takeshi Kovacs digs into a wealthy man’s "suicide," you’ll find the same stark mix of body-swapping, gladiatorial carnage, and the question Prime Intellect raised: what happens to ethics when bodies are replaceable and suffering can be reset?

If Lawrence’s creation of Prime Intellect led you to ponder whether consciousness, free will, or empathy survive in a hyper-rational universe, Blindsight sharpens those questions to a scalpel’s edge. The mission to contact the alien structure Rorschach, led by the predatory genius Jukka Sarasti, dissects awareness, utility, and what minds are for—much like watching Caroline test whether meaning remains when pain and death can be undone.