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 - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Daemon (Paperback)
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.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Finally a book for the nerd in your life......, Dec 15 2006
By Raymond G. Harder "BookBoy" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Daemon (Paperback)
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
5.0 out of 5 stars
Welcome to the New World. Are you ready?, Jan 11 2007
By F. Gallego - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Daemon (Paperback)
Based on the back-cover blurb, I expected Daemon would be an interesting `high concept' techno-thriller, but this book floored me. Zeraus seems to have thoroughly researched the technology presented and combines it in ways that are exciting and terrifying. This book pulls you in and doesn't let go.
You might think you know where the story is going, but believe me: you don't. This book will surprise you countless times, and it will stay with you long after you finish it.