Daemon
by Daniel Suarez
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Book Summary Information
Author: Daniel SuarezEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-08
ISBN: 0525951113
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Book Reviews of Daemon
Book Review: Rises above other thrillers
Summary: 4 Stars
(Before we get to the plot, we here @ The Rotten Review decided a bit of background was needed)
Daemon is the term given to programs that run in the background - we know that they're there and that react automatically to certain events. Daemons are tolerated even though they operate beyond the direct control of human beings because they have no will of their own - only triggers cam make them stop and go.
Daniel Suarez's brilliant thriller inverts that description - he creates a story based on a Daemon that seems to have its own will. It's a program that slowly but surely begins to extend its tendrils beyond cyberspace, turning human beings into computer peripherals. At least, that's the premise. "Daemon" the story begins as many thrillers do - with a murder. Detective Sebeck becomes the latest in a long line of local fictitious police officers to be embroiled in something bigger than himself once he begins a routine homicide. A string of otherwise unconnected events begin to lead to the deaths of computer experts connected with a now dead computer programmer, Matthew Sobol. The creator of hugely successful on-line games, Sobol seems to have made a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, one he appears to be putting to use serving a sinister agenda. Unlike pre-internet games, in which the interface was typically between man and AI, Sobol developed games for an era that cut its teeth on huge MMORPGs - epic tournaments played over the internet in which AI manipulated large numbers of human players as enemies and allies. As Sebeck draws connections between seemingly unconnected events, seemingly unconnected people find their fates tied in the growing menace of Sobol's Daemon. Media personalities, law enforcement, programmers and cyber-criminals - all find themselves receiving offers-they-dare-not-refuse, apparently from the program. Law enforcement quickly dismiss Daemon as a hoax, even as higher ups (men known only by the acronyms of their agencies) realize that they are facing an enemy that has seized the initiative and can make them fight on its terms.
WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?
In many ways, "Daemon" reminds you that you are reading a typical thriller - the characters aren't compelling, the dialog is mostly expository, the prose largely artless, there's a lot of tech-speak that often comes off as condescending, the finale is likely to disappoint and the novel spends so much time going places without ever reaching a destination - you begin to wonder if there is one.
WHY YOU MUST READ IT
At first glance, "Daemon" seems no different than many techno thrillers - using a computer app as an exotic vehicle upon which to build your typical fill-in-you-favorite-author's story of greed and geek-lust. Instead of cloned dinosaurs, wanton androids, suppressed ancient secrets and other subjects based-on-an-actual-Wikipedia-article - we have Matthew Sobol's distributed AI. In those other stories, the "device" is a convenient way have good fight evile, which normally boils down to separating the knowledgeable and honest from hucksters and idiots. With only the barest hints that that the authors of such novels have conducted any meaningful study of their subject (despite piles of accolades haling "meticulous research") these other stories never go beyond the premise, that is, they never get past their devices. A story based on an ancient manuscript detailing a secret history long suppressed by the powers that be is in fact a story of an ancient history and the threat it poses for the powers that be. The strength of such stories is no greater than the author's grasp of the underlying subject which is typically (and obviously) slim, encompassing no more than needed to fill about 300 pages of single spaced, 12 pt. print.
This is not the case with "Daemon". Brilliantly, Suarez keeps a tight lip on his subject - not allowing us to know whether the daemon is real, whether the required technology even exists (most authors gleefully give up that ghost within the first 50 pages). Just when the story begins to get a grip on the nature of its cybernetic antagonist, Suarez shifts gears and makes his enemy more amorphous - allowing its "shape" to vary based on whoever is analyzing it. Daemon becomes a national security threat when viewed by the government, an economic problem when revealed to the heads of companies it appears to have infected, a technological riddle when studied by cyber-security experts and a more social-studies issue when examined by anybody else. The beauty is that none of these different perspectives is that far off the bat - The Daemon co-opts humans into its plans, and the shape of the threat varies as much as human nature does. (Much like its enemies, Daemon's human collaborators have their own ideas of what their new paradigm means.) As a practical result, Suarez's Daemon remains shapeless even as it stays compelling. because we don't know what Daemon precisely is, we don't have to constantly ask themselves the same questions that hobble similar books - is this possible? Am I being skeptical about something that can happen? Am I just too stupid to debunk this story, and too lame to admit it? "Daemon" rises over other research-based thrillers because it rises past the need to be researched. The technology isn't really at issue.
Suarez keeps things humming by keeping his "scenes" mercifully short. Events seldom have enough breathing time to trigger the reader's own "suspension of belief" daemon, and Suarez proves himself adept with some great action scenes. "Daemon" is easily the kind of novel that the world wanted about 10 years ago, when the internet was new, and any mention of its name conjured up images of a sinister and unknown cybernetic universe, rather than an overheated domain of bloggers, twitters and slavish celebrity hounds. Nevertheless, Suarez breathes some much needed life into the fear of the internet, finally giving the world wide web its very own Black Widow.
Summary of Daemon
Already an underground sensation, a high-tech thriller for the wireless age that explores the unthinkable consequences of a computer program running without human control?a daemon?designed to dismantle society and bring about a new world orderTechnology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can?t always be said for the people who design them.
Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer?the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company?s stock price. But Sobol?s fans aren?t the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol?s secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it?s up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy?or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control. . . .
Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson.
Robin Cook on Daemon
Doctor and author Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word "medical" to the thriller genre. Thirty-one years after the publication of his breakthrough novel, Coma, he continues to dominate the category he created, including his most recent bestseller, Foreign Body, which explores a growing trend of medical tourism--first-world citizens traveling to third-world countries for 21st-century surgery.
Daemon is an ambitious novel, which sets out not only to entertain, which it surely does, but also to challenge the reader to consider social issues as broad as the implications of living in a technologically advanced world and whether democracy can survive in such a world.
The storyline portrays one possible world consequent to the development of the technological innovations that we currently live with and the reality that the author, Suarez, imagines will evolve, and it is chilling and tense (on www.thedaemon.com the reader can find evidence that the seemingly incredible advances Suarez proposes could in fact become real). Daemon is filled with multiple scenes involving power displays by the Daemon's allies resulting in complete loss of control by its enemies, violence with new and innovative weaponry, explosions, car crashes, blood, guts, and limbs-cut-off galore.
As far as computer complexity, Daemon will satisfy any computer geek's thirst. I was thankful for Pete Sebeck, the detective in the book whose average-person understanding of computers necessitates an occasional explanation about what is going on. I came away from the novel with a new understanding, respect, and fear of computer capability.
In the end, Suarez invites the reader to enter the "second age of reason," to think about where recent and imminent advances in computer technology are taking us and whether we want to go there. For me, it is this "thinking" aspect of the novel which makes it a particularly fun, satisfying, and significant read.
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