There’s a fascinating new “thriller of ideas” out called “Daemon”, and on Friday I got the chance to hear the author, Daniel Suarez, speaking about it. I had previously reviewed the book at Amazon, but after discussing things with the author I updated my review. Here’s what I wrote:
80% great (and there’s a reason for that)
If you’re a gamer, or a geek, or simply fascinated (or scared!) about what networked technology is doing to society and business, this book is for you. Or at least the first 80% is; the last 20% may or may not be. Daniel Suarez has constructed a tight, l33t cutting-edge techno-thriller with a premise that’s hard to disagree with: we are now so dependent on technology that the consequences of its manipulation are almost limitless. Control information, and you control money, and then people. Philosophers and the religious reject the possibility of artificial intelligence and claim that computers will never duplicate human experience; they overlook the fact that for many a good-enough simulation is better than a messy reality, and few people really care to tell them apart anyway.
Suarez leads us into his world step by step, using plausible extensions of familiar technologies: cell phones, GPS, intruder detection system, videogames, WiFi, RFID badges. Individually the changes have been previsioned by TV shows or Wired magazine; collectively they have a plausible and sobering power. We remember Ferris Bueller changing his school grades all those years ago, and it’s “trivially obvious” that it would be easy to engineer the release from prison of an otherwise unremarkable criminal. And after watching “Masters of the Universe” destroying prestigious financial companies with a few keystrokes, we accept that a modern corporation could be blackmailed and co-opted over the Internet.
The first 80% of the book is excellent: exciting, terrifying, inexorable, and mind-stretching. There’s a collection of satisfyingly-complex characters, good and bad, and Suarez orchestrates them very nicely. And we keep reading, because we want to know: how will it all turn out? Will the bad guys transform society into a Matrix-like shell, or will the contingency and serendipity of reality disrupt the best laid plans of cyber-mice and undead men?
I’m not going to provide any spoilers. What I will say is that I was disappointed with the resolution that Suarez chose. It’s hard to tell if it was the way he always intended things to unfold, or whether he simply couldn’t figure out a good ending and took the easy way out.
So a five star book with a two star ending. I’ll give it four, because I did enjoy most of it.
UPDATE: A couple of days ago, Daniel Suarez came to Amazon to talk about “Daemon”, and I asked him about the “resolution” issue. Originally the novel was much longer – well over 1,000 pages – and it was rejected by one publisher after another. So Suarez chopped it into two parts, and self-published the first half as “Daemon”. It was slow to take off, but eventually a number of tech-savvy pundits got wind of it and started a buzz, which led to it being picked up by the publishers Dutton (part of the Penguin empire).
So what I interpreted as the “resolution” of the story is, in fact, “climax”. To follow Freytag’s classic analysis, “Daemon” is all “rising action”: we have merely reached the apex of the “pyramid”, and will have to wait for the second half of the story before we get to the resolution and dénouement.
And when will that be? Well, Dutton wants to follow the standard tempo of hardcover and paperback publication, so Suarez has plenty of time for polishing the sequel. Shucks.
If all that “rising action” stuff is Greek to you, check out the Wikipedia article on Freytag’s model of dramatic structure.
So buy it already! And then be patient until, oh, probably some time in 2010 for “Freedom”….
