Questions for author Daniel Suarez

[Tom, Supreme Laser]

Hey all,

Next Tuesday we'll chat with Daniel Suarez author of the forthcoming Kill Decision as well as two of my all-time favorites Daemon and Freedom (TM).

So fire up your best questions for him!

(We will do our best to ascertain if we are actually speaking with Daniel Suarez or a clever bot.)

[Will]

Given the technological innovations of the past couple years since he penned Daemon and Freedom, if he were to revise and update, or match what is with what he's imagined...what would find a home? Would Google Glass be home of the Darknet?

[Pickle]

have you ever been to a rave?

[Kris]

Did you live in Houston at some point? You descriptions were spot on....

[Veronica, Supreme Sword]

Pickle wrote: "have you ever been to a rave?"

YES!! Awesome question!

[Stompro]

Did the themes and concepts of Daemon and Freedom(TM) come more from your personal experiences or from ideas that you researched? Or to rephrase, do you have experience writing homicidal autonomous scripts, or do you just think they are cool. (Should we be worried when we see your Obiturary, in the far far future?)

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

Is he trying to warn us about the power of unbridled technology in society, or does he just find it to be a compelling scenario to write about?

Hmm that's kind of a yes/no question. I guess I'm trying to decide if he's more of a Cory Doctorow (who in my opinion has the message "beware!" underlying his writing), or if he's more about the thrills and danger.

Maybe you can ask him what the most dangerous thing is that he's ever done?

[Daniel]

You feature military characters prominently in your books. What's your inspiration for these characters since they seem to cover both the heroic, Roy Merritt, and the totally corrupt, the Major?

[Mohrravvian]

You self-published the book initially. Was this because you tried to find a publisher and they were not interested, or did you just decide to do it yourself for some other reason? If the publishers originally were not interested, why do you think that is? (Seems crazy!)

Also, what did you think of the self publishing process vs using a publisher?

[Alterjess]

I would like to know how the concept of the daemon changed in between writing Daemon and Freedom(tm). In the first book, the daemon is not much more than an autonomous killing machine, but by the second book, the daemon and the darknet society it creates are the heroes. Was this always the intention, or were there real-world events which made him take this direction?

[Mark]

My apologies if you are continuously asked this question: Have you considered writing more stories in the world of Daemon and FreedomTM?

Can you confirm that Google's Project Glass is really a precursor to a darknet operative's HUD glasses?? Haha! It just seems such a coincidence that they are so similar?!?

And finally, what are you currently reading?

Thank you for engaging the community!

[Quasar]

Yeah. I've really wanted to see how the universe plays out post Freedom.

As for questions...I would like to hear his reaction to Glass. I guess every reader immediately thought of the tech from Daemon.

[Jlawrence, S&L Moderator]

What piece of real-world technology or programming impresses/scares you the most, in terms of it approaching something you depict in Daemon?

(I see people here are guessing your answer will be "Google Glass" ;) ).

[Arroyo0]

1) Does the Darknet (minus the VR/AR elements) exist already today?

2) In the books you touched on the issue of Corporate Personhood, do you agree with Charles Stross future projection (Halting State, Rule 34) to take this a step further and corporations have "personal rights" they also have an equivalent "personal responsibility"?

[Jay]

Would you consider Daemon and Freedom to have an anti government stance or an anti corporate stance or both?

[Rob, Roberator]

Do you have a background in computers/programming? What made you write Daemon in the first place.

[Andy]

Are there any plans to make Deamon or Freedom (TM) into a movie or TV series? If so can you share any details (such as dates and distribution channels)?

I think this would be a great idea; the only hurdle being the reaction this would cause among the non-tech community. I think a movie or show might increase general technophobia.

[Rodrigo]

What sort of technologies you did not know about and you embraced after writing Daemon and Freedom(TM), and what technologies you thought better about and decided to stop using because of what you researched?

[Jump_scare]

I wish I had a better question (and it may be too late for it), but was Daemon / Freedom intended to be one book initially, was planned to be two books or was there thought of a trilogy at one point?

Anyways, looking forward for Daniel to be on Sword & Laser!

[Steve]

A long awaited opportunity! Daniel, I have been anxious to find out what you think of Google's implementation of his Darknet HUD tech from the first two books. You did such an amazing job of detailing virtually every aspect of the technology from the UI to the way that in interacts at a network level.

It seems that Google's efforts could be considered an early beta in bring this sort of tech to the real world. How do you feel seeing your brainchild literally taking its first steps in the real world?

[Alfredo]

The link to the episode says Episode 7, it should be Episode 8...