Daemon (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer--the architect behind half a dozen popular online games. His premature death from brain cancer depressed both gamers and his company's stock price. But Sobol's fans weren't the only ones to note his passing. He left behind something that was scanning Internet obituaries, too--something that put in motion a whole series of programs upon his death. Programs that moved money. Programs that recruited people. Programs that killed.

Confronted with a killer from beyond the grave, Detective Peter Sebeck comes face-to-face with the full implications of our increasingly complex and interconnected world--one where the dead can read headlines, steal identities, and carry out far-reaching plans without fear of retribution. Sebeck must find a way to stop Sobol's web of programs--his Daemon--before it achieves its ultimate purpose. And to do so, he must uncover what that purpose is . . .

Product Details

• Paperback: 444 pages
• Publisher: Verdugo Press (December 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978627105
• ISBN-13: 978-0978627102
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #444,906 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent High Tech Thriller, April 30, 2007

By	Phillip Sites (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Daemon incorporates many current and near-future technologies. Zeraus' vision of our use and misuse of technology is both intriguing and disconcerting. The author spins an exciting tale and all the while you're thinking, holy crap, is any of this actually possible? Or worse - maybe it's already here.

I visited the Daemon website and there is a page dedicated to many of the technologies used in this book. In fact, the website has a synthetic voice to guide you. It's hard to appreciate this until you've read Daemon. A female, British-accented speech module known only as 'The Voice' plays an integral role in the novel, and it's not your typical alien-sounding voice either. It's alarmingly realistic.

Here's a list of some relevant technologies used in the book:

MMORPGs (very creative use of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games)
Voice Recognition/Synthetic Voice Systems
News-reading bots
Acoustical weaponry
Hypersonic Sound
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Haptic clothing
Fab Labs
Digital Ink
GPS/Geo-caching

There's quite a bit more, but it's how the author rolls it all together to create something new and (at least for me) wholly unexpected that makes Daemon such a fascinating book. Buy it. Read it. You won't be disappointed.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally a book for the nerd in your life......, December 15, 2006

By	Raymond G. Harder "BookBoy" (Pomona, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a computer professional I found the technology in this book believeable --which is it's most compelling feature. Whether one individual with a lot of know-how and money could pull off a scenario like this is debatable, but an entity (Government, corporation, etc.) certainly could which is what makes the moral underpinnings of the tale so important. I wish the author had spent more time on the implications of hitching our wagons to technological hegemonies in general and companies like Microsoft in particular. They aren't inherently evil, but as the book points out, a lack of diversity from an evolutionary standpoint has always been bad.

I loved the book and have bought 7 copies (so far) as gifts, but I rated it 4 stars because I think the author ran out of gas at the end and didn't make as strong of a moral statement as he tried to do. I can't say I am disappointed, but what could have been a classic and a great book seemed to suffer from over aggressive editing at the end and thus ends up as only a very good book which I highly recommend for the nerd. I would be interested to see what a literate non-nerd thinks of it.

The story is strong, but the writing isn't literature. If you liked this book, you'll love "Darwin Among the Machines" by Dyson; "Mind Children" by Hans Moravec might also interest you; and if you can still get your hands on it the classic cautionary morality tale in the computer industry is still "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation" by Weizenbaum who asks the basic question: Just because we CAN do it, does it necessarily follow that we MUST or SHOULD do it?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Distributed Murder, January 11, 2007

By	John C. Vanover - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I liked this book a lot. The pacing and action were that of a popular novel -- the action scenes were some of the best I've ever read -- but the characters, descriptions and dialogue were much better than those in "airplane reads." The antagonists, both alive and dead, were particularly, fist-clenchingly nasty.

And the technology was spot on! For once an author was able to describe hacks using actual security back doors rather than simply bandying about buzzwords.

I have one quibble with the book, but as it involves a hefty spoiler, I'll spare you. But, yeah, very well done. I'll give it four stars simply because I feel five should be reserved for classics.