A year ago Ulrich recommended “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez to me and now I’ve finally had some time to read it and it’s successor “Freedom”. If you haven’t read them, do so … now! Kind of similar to “Reamde” by Neal Stephenson (still my favorite book) the story merges aspects real and virtual life; there with online gaming while here with that and augmented reality tech. In Daemon’s case it also focuses heavily on how transparent current western society is and how easy public opinion can be subverted.
The original premise of the story is about the legacy of the fictional game designer Matthew Sobol, that is a network of simple computer daemons that get activated by events in the real world. What happens after each such trigger changes the world and might either lead to the destructure or profound renovation of modern society.
Both books are extremely pleasant to read and esp. the second one is quite action-packed. Corporate espionage, corruption, green-tech, augmented reality, gamification, private military … it is all here! But while other stories end there and move into something like a “survival mode”, here the author provides some nice little hints and ideas how to possibly get out of this.
While I think it’s safe to recommend both books to just about anyone, people being used to interacting online will most likely feel at home here sooner. There are absolutely some areas where I’m not sure how scifi/technically- possible they actually are, but nothing felt so wrong that it hurt the flow of the story. Simply a great high-tech/SciFi read!
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