Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A Quick Book Review

I just finished Daniel Suarez' new techno-thriller, Daemon. It did everything a techno-thriller ought to do, with decent character development, lots of twists and turns in the plot, a surprise ending, and alas a note signaling that there will be a sequel (I'm not a huge fan of series).

Only one thing challenged my suspension of disbelief. When I took a break from the book and actually did some work, I had a Windows related hiccup. Since the book is based upon several really cool ideas about interrelating bleeding edge technology and software, the thought crossed my mind that all the things that occur in the book, from the deployment of a complex series of daemons to the use of AI recruitment tools to the use of SUV's as killer vehicles (one of the villains is a Hummer) depend upon the reliable operation of untested software. Some of the code would necessarily be very complex and quite long.

If you read the book, and you ought to it's quite good, try not to think about buggy software.

2 comments:

Perpetua said...

Hi Matthew,
What is bleeding edge technology, as in "interrelating bleeding edge technology and software"?

mousestalker said...

Technology even newer (and riskier) than cutting edge. Gadgets, toys and ideas that are at the intersection of science fiction and science fact.