Since I read this two book series back-to-back (in about a week and a half — have been home sick), I figure it’s okay to post about both of them together. I first read about Daemon on Joi’s blog, and it sounded interesting enough to give a try.
[Semi-spoilers below. If you like cyberspace thrillers, you probably want to read these — and could probably go without the following paragraphs.]
Anyway, I liked them both a lot — probably Daemon a little more than Freedom (TM). They’re sort of a mix between Fight Club and World of Warcraft, with maybe some Blade Runner thrown in — lots of great ideas, lots of real implications of the technologies we all use constantly.
I will say that Daemon is the first novel I’ve ever read that included the syntax for a SQL injection attack on a web site — but maybe that’s just me. đŸ™‚
There’s a lot of technical jargon for fiction, and lots of solid ideas about how technology works and what the future could hold — and clearly researched extremely well.
Anyway, they’re a fun couple of books — if you’re wondering what World of Warcraft grafted onto our own everyday world might look like, these are a great place to start. (That particular part gets a lot more pronounced in the second book.)
If you haven’t already, I’d suggest reading “Halting State” by Charles Stross. It sounds a bit different than these books, but it’s a nice bit of SF about the future of MMO’s.
I’ll second the recommendation for “Halting State.” That was pretty well done and he’s working on a sequel of sorts.
Doctorow’s “For the Win” (related to his short story, “Anda’s Game”) is coming out this spring as well and is about union activism amongst gold farmers in an MMORG.