The skillsets involved are quite extraordinary. Building up fleets of that size takes years of planning and effort. In an MMORPG called Eve Online, McCormick estimates that more than 5,000 players joined the fray on both sides of a conflict that ultimately resulted in the loss of more than $200,000 of real US dollars because of the resulting virtual spacecraft damage. If you think I am kidding, read Rick McCormick’s article on The Verge that describes the epic space battle that occurred in January of this year. As they progress in the game and gain experience, they learn how to organize large groups of people from around the world, function within a team to accomplish team goals, assess strengths and weaknesses within the team and of potential adversaries, and plan and execute operations that leverage those strengths and weaknesses for success. For the non-gamers in the crowd, people who excel in MMORPGs have a lot more skills than simply pressing the Enter Key really fast in order to kill monsters. One of the things his Daemon does is recruit, initially from his game. Of course, because Sobol is dead, he needs living surrogates to do his bidding. The two books combine into one story that is cyber-security-canon worthy. Suarez demonstrates quality writing that gets the technical details right. The old-world order fights back and results in an epic confrontation of brute force versus technical force.

The Daemon and its disciples infiltrate everything through the direct application of hacking, assassination, and intimidation. He and his key protagonist, the designer of the Daemon, think that all governments and their corporate overlords are too corrupt and that the only way to resolve the matter is to burn the world order to the ground and start over. Suarez introduces these new ideas from an old-school hacker perspective in an effort to reboot the world order. Suarez’s two books tell one long story and are loaded with seemingly futuristic ideas that are just years away form general deployment. If you similarly like Michael Crichton books like Jurassic Park, State of Fear, Prey, and Disclosure, you will think that the always-intriguing author has returned from the grave. If you appreciate hacking stories like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or gaming stories like Ready Player One or stories that combine both like Reamde, you will love Daniel Suarez’s Daemon and Freedom™ like I did.

Freedom daniel suarez