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Daniel Suarez
Daemon
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I think, he got substantial parts of the book wrongly.
Luke was criticising that the deamon grew "to..."
Hi,
I recorded this review over a year ago, I think.
If the book was a better book, in any way, I'd spend a while to consider your points and reply to them one by one. But there's no point.
The book was shit. On every level, the book was terrible.
There might have been some good ideas there, but Daniel Suarez was incapable of writing about them at a level that I found either intriguing, interesting or entertaining.
Any misunderstanding I may have about the book may or may not be my fault. In a book full of plot hole, with so many holes it feels like it is all hole, a small non-hole might slip through. But in that case I feel confident that the writing was so bad that the misunderstanding was understandable on my part.
When I met my current girlfriend, she was reading this book. I said "It's good for the first third, but once you skip forward, it's not worth it."
She finished the book, but agreed with me.
And so I find this book a good indication if it is worth me spending more time in discussion with the person. If they feel they need to defend it, or think it has great worth beyond a dull Michael Bay style action movie, I'm simply not going to engage in serious debate about it.
There are many, many, many other books out there, both good and bad, that are worth more of my time than this. If other listeners who have read the book more recently want to address these points, please go ahead, but I'll spend my time reading the next book, in this case.
Thanks for the feedback though, for any other book I'd really appreciate it.
Luke B.
Thing is, a lot of people really like Michael Bay movies! Sometimes it's exactly what I'm after for a summer blockbuster. I think the analagy is really good - but it doesn't make the book shit - it makes it fun (and badly written). Remember Avatar, Pirates and Transforms are all in the top grossing movies of all time. Listening to your review Luke was like listening to you review one of those movies.*Sometimes* I don't give a shit about character development, plot holes, narrative perspective etc. If I'm captivated enough by the story I'm more then willing to ignore everything else.
Mod
Unfortunately I didn't think the story was up to much either.
Oh, and I wouldn't put Avatar in the same class as Pirates and Transformers. It might have been a silly story, and an old story, with plot holes all over, but at least it HAD a story. Unlike what I've seen so far of Transformers and Pirates.
Chris wrote: "Thing is, a lot of people really like Michael Bay movies! Sometimes it's exactly what I'm after for a summer blockbuster. I think the analagy is really good - but it doesn't make the book shit - it...""Top grossing movie of all time," doesn't mean anything except the studio had a really good marketing department.
You act as though "fun" and "good" are antithetical, but they're not, and it's perfectly reasonable to expect a book or movie to be both.
"Top grossing movie of all time," doesn't mean anything except the studio had a really good marketing department.If that really were true then you wouldn't get the subsequent sequels also appearing.
You act as though "fun" and "good" are antithetical, but they're not, and it's perfectly reasonable to expect a book or movie to be both.
My point wasn't that you can't have both, just that Luke dismissed the 'good' without considering 'fun'.
There is a place for the Michael Bay-style products.
...Oh, and I wouldn't put Avatar in the same class as Pirates and Transformers
Neither would I - I'd take Pirates & Transformers over Avatar any day.
Mod
My point is that Daemon just isn't good. Here are some good books that are also fun:
Hmmm, I was going to write a list but I don't have time. Just see most of the 4-5 star books on this page: http://www.sfbrp.com/episode-lists
It doesn't matter how fun a book is if it's no good. It's like multiplying by zero: no matter how big the first number is, the answer is always "0".
SFBRP Listeners
Books mentioned in this topic
Brave New World (other topics)Fahrenheit 451 (other topics)
1984 (other topics)
I think, he got substantial parts of the book wrongly.
Luke was criticising that the deamon grew "too big", that it didn't remain a simply construct invented to kill a few people but instead turned to gain a kind of world domination. Luke says by making this turn the construct becomes unrealistic. I do not agree upon this criticism, on the contrary, I think if the deamon had just been a simple murder weapon the whole story would have been simply yet another crime novel without significance. It is the whole idea, to turn a game engine loose on the real world and have it control humans like AI bots in a game to achieve its scripted goals that makes the story fascinating!
I also think that some of Lukes points regarding the realism of the story do not hold (others do, though):
Luke argues that the story looks like a lot of historical events and individual actions seem to have been planned ahead by M. Sobol in order to program the daemon with the necessary counter-actions, much in a fashion of psychohistory in Asimov's foundation series. This is however clearly not the case - the daemon is a game engine, a kind of expert system or "narrow AI" that is actually able to respond to developments and actions [i]on its own[i]. Actually, this is one of the shining beauties of the book!
It might be a matter of debate whether any such enginge can ever be advanced enough to run an actual society, but at least the idea has quite some appeal, and I think it was Venezuela's Hugo Chavez who fantasized about the possibilities of modern computing power and software finally enabling the realization of the dream of communism and a planned economy.
Criticism is also directed at the idea the Government is trying to keep the daemon's existence a secret, even after thousands of people have become involved in it. I think this is not really the case- the Government officially takes the position that the whole daemon thing was a hoax and it doesn't officially admit the presence of the daemon. It also clearly tries to divert attention from daemon actions by spreading cover stories. It is clearly stated, the the public is partly becoming well aware of daemon activities (the "blogosphere is buzzing"), and this is obviously why recruitment of humans by the daemon is stepping up so quickly. Clearly, the book is not stating that government efforts to keep the daemon secret are very successful...
Also the argument that Suarez is not allowed to criticize capitalism because it was the form of economy that created all the fancy tech gadgets that the deamon is using is not valid. First of all the statement "These things are there because of capitalism" is outright ridicolous - never can such a statement of causality be made in history because it cannot be proven or disproven, it's like postulating the existence of god (or her non-existence for that matter). moreover, Suarez opens a valid perspective on capitalism: Yes, it did facilitate great progress and inventions, but it also leads to a great number of problems and it is not clear yet whether it can ultimately succeed (daemon was written well before the financial crisis, its sequel was not).
Also I think the ending of the book is not as bad as Luke thinks, it might be predictable and it clearly points to a sequel, but it's nevertheless a logical continuation of earlier developments in the story.
Now let's face some of the [i]real[/i] weaknesses of the book:
It does have logical loopholes. Where Orwell's 1984 excelled in leaving absolutely no way out of the party's suppression system, the daemon clearly leaves some wide open, and it's opponents don't use them - this is frustrating to the reader: The Journalist Anji Anderson has been identified by the imprisoned detective as a member of the dameon network. While Sebeck must be "officially" kept in custody and eventually killed by the state in order to maintain the appearance of the daemon being ah hoax, all the security agencies know that he's innocent. Since that identification was done in a life interview, they also must know that he knows - so they have a high-rank operative of the daemon identified - and they don't do anything about her!
Second thing is, as Luke pointed out, the dependence of the deamon's hardware on GPS. Hey, GPS is run by the government. While it can be argued that they can't switch off GPS because the daemon would take that as a declaration of war and thrash the economy (an argument frequently stated in the book in other contexts), there are more subtle possibilities: One could degrade its accuracy or, worse still, offset the whole grid by say 10 metres for a few minutes to find most of daemon's cars and bikes in roadside ditches...
Anyway, the latter weakness might be forgiven, but then there is these endless action scenes where silly robot motorbikes equipped with razor blades as weapons slaughter a huge number of people - that's a little over the top and actually ruins any kind of serious asset the story might otherwise have. Imagine 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 with action scenes going on for pages and pages... Brave New World needed them because the usage of brutal violence was part of the concept, but this is not at all the case in [i]daemon[/i] -especially not when regarding the sequel, where the daemon turns into a darknet that is no longer violent at all, but instead kind of a benevolent hippie dictatorship... I'd actually like to hear Luke do a podcast on that one, because I guess he will find that one really bad! Suarez' turns away from network technology and turns the story towards socio economics completely...