By Margaret
Curtis, PhD
The novel Daemon surges with ambiguity. Published
by Dutton in 2009, and slated to become a movie, it turns up in a remainder bin
at Big Lots in Dunkirk, NY. Reports of a
sequel titled Freedom come chasing
after readers, too, but where are they hiding, if Daemon sleeps in a cardboard box, priced at fifty cents?
One challenge
lies in the title, which suggests supernatural forces await its audience. Maybe
nothing could be farther from the truth—unless computer programs can act like
demons, too. Slyly, the author, Daniel Suarez, lets readers decide if programmers
function now as Satan once did in theologically trained imaginations.
Suarez pulls
no punches in telling readers what his Daemon
means: His frontispiece declares: “daemon…A computer program that runs
continuously in the background and performs specified operations at predefined
times or in response to certain events.” Nevertheless, selected critics claim
Suarez’s subject is a computer virus, a biological analogy.
Critics may
also label this book a “techno-thriller,” although its plot still waits to be
fully unleashed upon an unsuspecting public who haven’t read its revelations.
Critics should be reading Suarez’s qualifications to project science fiction
from present realities. Read his crisp bio on the book jacket, and beware of
Hollywood’s assumptions:
“Daniel
Suarez is an independent systems consultant to Fortune 1000 companies. He has
designed and developed enterprise software for the defense, finance, and
entertainment industries. An avid gamer and technologist, he lives in
California. Daemon is his first
novel.”
California
remains a perfect location for a professional technologist. Wikipedia informs
readers: “Despite the development of
other high-tech economic centers throughout the United States and the world, Silicon Valley continues to be the leading hub
for high-tech innovation and development, accounting for one-third (1/3) of all
of the venture
capital investment
in the United States.”
Thus this
novel provides perspective on computers from an ultimate insider. Notifications
of upcoming events pop into Americans’ in-boxes all the time. They take them for
granted. Suarez does not. Americans may also laugh and smile at automated
vehicles; they may rejoice, too, at the huge fortunes amassed by tech gurus.
Meanwhile, Suarez keeps his eye on power. Read this book ASAP!
Additional
reading:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley>
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