Daemon
Daniel Suarez's first novel opens with the obituary of Matthew Sobol, a celebrated video game designer who has died of cancer. His death activates a daemon, a piece of software watching the internet for news of his passing, which then begins executing a long-prepared plan. The daemon hires killers through online jobs, recruits true believers, and uses its access to financial and industrial systems to undermine governments and corporations. A small group of police, security researchers, and journalists tries to understand what is happening before the program takes hold. Suarez had spent years as an enterprise software consultant before writing the book, and the plot is built on detailed and plausible exploitation of real systems. Originally self-published, the novel was picked up by Dutton in 2009 and became a touchstone in conversations about autonomous software, artificial intelligence, and security.
What you might want to know about Daemon
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The death of a video game billionaire triggers a distributed software agent designed to reshape the global economy by force.
Musk endorsed the novel on Twitter in 2014, calling Suarez's techno-thriller about a posthumous software takeover a great read.
Yes. Suarez continued the story in Freedom, which picks up directly from the events of Daemon and resolves the larger plot.
Daemon was written by Daniel Suarez, published in 2009 by Dutton.
Daemon is 448 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Daemon takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
Daemon is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.