There are 2 books i would like people to read, Daemon and Freedom(tm)

[LiberalArkie]

Last edited Sat Jan 30, 2016, 04:27 PM - Edit history (1)

By Daniel Suarez.

Biography
DANIEL SUAREZ is the author of the New York Times bestseller Daemon, Freedom™, Kill Decision, and Influx. A former systems consultant to Fortune 1000 companies, he has designed and developed software for the defense, finance, and entertainment industries. With a lifelong interest in both IT systems and creative writing, his high-tech and sci-fi thrillers focus on technology-driven change. Suarez is a past speaker at TED Global, MIT Media Lab, NASA Ames, the Long Now Foundation, and the headquarters of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon -- among many others. Self-taught in software development, he is a graduate from the University of Delaware with a BA in English Literature. An avid PC and console gamer, his own world-building skills were bolstered through years as a pen & paper role-playing game moderator. He lives in Los Angeles, California.



Robin Cook on Daemon
Doctor and author Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word "medical" to the thriller genre. Thirty-one years after the publication of his breakthrough novel, Coma, he continues to dominate the category he created, including his most recent bestseller, Foreign Body, which explores a growing trend of medical tourism--first-world citizens traveling to third-world countries for 21st-century surgery.
Daemon is an ambitious novel, which sets out not only to entertain, which it surely does, but also to challenge the reader to consider social issues as broad as the implications of living in a technologically advanced world and whether democracy can survive in such a world.

The storyline portrays one possible world consequent to the development of the technological innovations that we currently live with and the reality that the author, Suarez, imagines will evolve, and it is chilling and tense (on www.thedaemon.com the reader can find evidence that the seemingly incredible advances Suarez proposes could in fact become real). Daemon is filled with multiple scenes involving power displays by the Daemon's allies resulting in complete loss of control by its enemies, violence with new and innovative weaponry, explosions, car crashes, blood, guts, and limbs-cut-off galore.

As far as computer complexity, Daemon will satisfy any computer geek's thirst. I was thankful for Pete Sebeck, the detective in the book whose average-person understanding of computers necessitates an occasional explanation about what is going on. I came away from the novel with a new understanding, respect, and fear of computer capability.

In the end, Suarez invites the reader to enter the "second age of reason," to think about where recent and imminent advances in computer technology are taking us and whether we want to go there. For me, it is this "thinking" aspect of the novel which makes it a particularly fun, satisfying, and significant read.

http://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731

Freedom is Daniel Suarez's follow up to his 2008/2009 surprise best seller, Daemon. Last year I was blown away by Daemon. Suarez managed to write a compelling thriller around some big ideas. I have been a huge fan of Michael Crichton for years but I always felt his characterizations were weak and the big ideas were shoe horned into a thriller plot. Suarez stays true to the big idea and manages to weave a realistic plot with fully fleshed out characters and situations. This isn't some made-for-movie screenplay, this is a fully realized thriller with deep ideas and a compelling story. I was sucked in from the first page and devoured the first book and left gasping at the end for the follow up. Freedom, just released, doesn't disappoint (except maybe I was hoping for a trilogy). Freedom is a different kind of book to Daemon, the plot continuation is smooth, but the atmosphere of Freedom is very different. While Daemon was a techno thriller, Freedom morphs into a hero's quest/mythological story. The technological ideas are still there and actually they are fully realized in Freedom. Suarez manages to flesh out the technological vision he alluded to Daemon. The convergence of life and augmented reality are smoothly juxtaposed to provide a glimpse of a near future. Suarez is a technologist and it shows. His use of current technology to create his vision is accurate and realistic. He explores the implications of social network theory, augmented reality, game design and ad-hoc network topologies to form a backdrop for a dystopian future. Even his underlying message of governments gone amuck are well researched and realistic; if a little paranoid.

Bottom line: Freedom is a solid sequel to Deamon and together they form a compelling thriller. For those that like big ideas and technological innovations you are in for a treat. No longer are big ideas and fully realized stories mutually exclusive. This is Michael Crichton meets Michael Chabon meets Joseph Campbell - ideas meets characters meets mythology. You do have to read Daemon first, but together they are a fun, intellectually stimulating joy ride through the near future.

Note: If you like the big ideas and technology behind the book, definitely check out Suarez's talk at the Long Now Foundation - Daniel Suarez: Daemon: Bot-mediated Reality.

http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-TM-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451231899/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=080AP6HPDQZ7BPBN2EV3


Suarez has managed to capture the feelings that a lot of us feel, a lot that Occupy and The Bernie folks feel. I preferred the audio books as they are very good with an extremely good reader. I don't read as fast as I used to. They are a seat of the pants books, dealing with .001% greed, MIC, everything that we discuss here as a real techno thriller.

His site http://thedaemon.com

[farleftlib]

1. Thanks LiberalArkie

I'm always looking for my next book to read and these sound good. I hope these aren't too techy with the IT stuff. Whaddya think?

[LiberalArkie]

2. They are, but you will get the drift. It isn't the techy stuff as much as what the "millennials"

and gen-xers do to combat the .001%ers and the Monsantos and Goldman Sacks and the MIC out there. I started with the books and found the audio books had the best readers I had ever heard. So now I try to find other books with the same readers. They are long but are so worth it. I just finished my third reading of them. Seems that Bernie provoked me.

[farleftlib]

3. Wow you're third reading?!

You must really like these books. I'm not terribly tech savvy but I love reading thrillers and the subject matter really does seem timely. Next time I have a few extra bucks for some new books, I'll check them out. Thanks for getting back to me.

[LiberalArkie]

4. Yea, it is kindof like what if a good thecho thriller writer was liberal and wrote about what

Monsanto was doing to the small farmer, and wrote about the big multinational companies having traffic laws written to where they controlled everything and the news organizations were part of it, and etc and etc. What if someone wrote 2 books about all that and the reader could relate to all of it, because it is in the news. And what it the heros being the tech savvy young kids and the older adults. But the John Does out there watching their FOX and NBC etc had no idea of what was going on in the world.