[eps]

Daemon was virtually unreadable.

It's a hacker-themed fairtale for computer illiterate, basically. I had a non-techy friend borrow the book and they too couldn't finish it, because it was just way over acceptable believability limits even for them.

[madmax108]

Ohh man, for me it was EXACTLY the opposite. Daemon was one of the finest examples of a book in the cybercrime genre. It was one of those "Black Mirror" style entertainment: Take known tech and push it towards dystopia style stories. Daemon was was super-fun, and absolutely un-putdownable (Literally read it in a single sitting IIRC).

Almost all the tech (Self driving cars, distributed systems, daemons that can self replicate (viruses), collaborative systems, a Darknet all exist in some form or the other today! Is it fantasy? Duh!

Is it a fun read for someone who works building these exact systems fora living? Definitely!

[anon-anon]

Completely agree. Everything is possible in it. If there was indeed someone who had a far surpassed genius level of IQ and tech know how, and dedicated hours of their time to developing the stuff with an unlimited budget (which basically is what Matthew Sobol supposedly has) then I could easily understand how a lot of things in that book could become reality.

Either way - a fun read and a good book to re-visit. One of the few that I read every few years or so...

[pavel_lishin]

Looking back on it now, I think the one thing that's really not plausible is the idea that someone could write a system that can anticipate anything that can happen. It was a little too Foundation/Psychohistory for me.

But it was still a fantastic novel, I loved reading it, and will probably re-read it again and again.

[jefurii]

Did you read Freedom(TM)? It's a "sequel" but is really the second half of the novel. Addresses your critique in a very interesting way.

[pavel_lishin]

I did, yup. I was actually super mad at Daemon; I always try to get people to get both at once, to avoid the cliffhanger.

I don't think it address it enough; it made it more plausible by admitting that it can't be completely autonomous, but I'm not entirely sold. Having said that, I still love the series, much like I love any fantasy novel :P

[bougiefever]

These are among my favorite books, and I've read thousands of books. It was written in the 90s or early 2000s, so the tech that was so futuristic now exists everywhere (IoT). You question believability? The tech is so not "just way over acceptable", much of it already exists. If we can suspend our belief to read about aliens, hobbits, magical schools, talking animals, etc., this hardly stretches the imagination at all.

Don't let this guy stop you from reading these awesome books! I recently re-read it, and the first few chapters are pretty tough because it lays out all the tech premises. Stick with it. The plot will keep you engaged, and the storytelling is supurb

[wpietri]

If you don't like something, I think it's better just to say that. Daemon is demonstrably not unreadable, in that quite a lot of people did read and enjoy it. So much so that Wired did an article on how it started as an underground hit among tech-inclined people: https://www.wired.com/2008/04/pl-print-20/

[curiousgal]

Check out the Audiobook then.