Daemon by Daniel Suarez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've just become a huge fanboy with one book.

That's to say I was rightly blown away. :) All right. To explain. What first seems like a techno-thriller with gamers and programmers and a murderer doing all his murders after his own death by cancer then quickly turns into a social and economical exploration based on the trends we're now facing.

This is a fun and complicated story filled with many twists and turns, awesome characters, and a world-changing creation that turns us all into players in a world-wide socio-economic game based on distributed network theory and game-development strategies. You know that little military idea of Game Theory? Why not take it to an All New Level and create for ourselves a Game Of Our Lives, so pervasive a virus and lucrative for all the players that it takes over every level of government, corporation, and home? It's like having the mafia become a super genius living in every computer and taking over everything purely by social hacking. It's beautiful.

I've seen a number of somewhat similar tales grace the page, but most of those are social hacking through social media. This one is a bit more fundamental than that. This one leaves us all alone unless it has something it needs, in conjunction with so many other people-pieces, that when they're put together, create major changes without anyone knowing exactly what was up until it happened. A computer god or Microsoft Design Strategy. Whatever. It's gorgeous.

And so strange that the novel still keeps up with it's techno-thriller ride, still managing a wonderful story while also exploring the depths of an entirely plausible and scary takeover of the world. :) By AI.

I totally recommend this fantastic SF. It is both fun and important for the field. :) Solid as hell and a pure delight, even with some of the more disturbing social aspects intact. No one is innocent. That's kinda the point. We deserve to be taken over by a computer parasite. :)

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