Monday, February 16, 2009

"Daemon" by Daniel Suerez

"Daemon" is the kind of book one can not put down. I just finished the last 200 pages. Too bad it is also a book that does not end: part two comes out in 2010. Boo: I was waiting for a pay-off that never came.

Great plot, fun characters, scary bad guy, far-fetched and hard to believe, but terrifying if this could actually come true.

Matthew Sobol is a computer game engineer. When he dies, the news of his death sets off a computer daemon that begins to wreak havoc all over the place and begins to control the world.

It's like Saw III and IV but instead with radical computer programs.

The books explores issues of intelligence, democracy and even resurrection and faith.

Check out pg. 171: the good guys to to Sobol's funeral, expecting to feel deep hatred for the man. But but the character Sebeck is unprepared for his reaction when he first sees Sobol's corpse. He is shocked to see the man's body, wasted away and destroyed by cancer, the scar from surgery, his sunken cheeks, his one open eye. Unprepared for this, Sobol feels pity for the man, even though in his death he is responsible for the death of many policemen. "surely Sebeck wanted to see Sobol burn in Hell-but he'd never considered Sobol had been living in hell for some time already."

On page 343 there is mention of disruptive innovation: change was good; painful perhaps, but good. It made you stronger. When you stop changing, you star dying.

Then on 417, this take on resurrection: "Christ is a recurring motif in many cultures; death and rebirth; symbolic turning of the seasons...Wyle E. Coyote was a... Christ figure...and Acme Company was Rome..."

Great read, I'm just upset it did not end but left me hanging on.

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