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Daniel Suarez’s startling first novel, DaemonDaemon reviews, lands on store shelves this Thursday, January 8th.  If you have read my review of Daemon, you’ll recall that we gave it 6 stars out of 5, which brought our site down for a few days (perhaps an early sign of the Daemon’s awakening?). The fact that Daniel took time out of his busy schedule to answer some of our questions also makes me nervous. I have a bad feeling that you, the reader, are about to be infected with a neurological meme-based virus encoded to trigger your genetic predisposition for peer pressure.

After reading my review for the third time, and the following exchange with the author, you may feel compelled to purchase two copies of Daemon and give one of them to that family member you completely forgot about over the holidays.  It makes me nervous to say, but let’s get on with our regularly scheduled programming, shall we?

swivel: I’m sure this feels like a long time coming after printing-on-demand for years. What are you feeling right now with the release of your first novel, Daemon, just weeks away?

Daniel Suarez: Since I reached this point in increments, rather than in one giant leap, the publication doesn’t seem as surreal as it might have seemed a few years back. That said, it’s a very different feeling having other people promote one’s work. Dutton has made a strong marketing commitment to Daemon, and I get the impression this is not the typical first-time author experience.

So how do I feel? Fortunate. My wife and I worked hard to get the word out about Daemon, but I never forget that my early readers are the reason I got the book deal with Dutton.

swivel: What was your greatest inspiration for the plot of Daemon? Was there anything you were working on, studying, or playing when you realized that a computer program could make a realistic villain with today’s technology?

Suarez: Not to frighten anyone, but the inspiration was a software application I wrote back in the late 90’s. Far from being designed to undermine the modern world, it was just a fictional weather generator for role playing gamers (WeatherMaster by Milieu Simulations). I sold it via the Web with a 30-day trial and click-to-purchase functionality – completely automated. The revenue accumulated in a merchant account from which site hosting and online advertising costs were swept automatically.

After a particularly busy period of other client work, I finally got a chance to check the account and found a substantial sum had accumulated in my absence. This made me realize that, were I to keel over, the system would continue without me – which in turn got me thinking about what a dead person could accomplish in the modern world. Answer: a lot. This only became truer as time went on and our society became more connected, more centralized, and more impersonal. I felt compelled to create a cautionary tale to encompass this possibility.

swivel: There isn’t a wasted page in Daemon. Every paragraph presses the plot forward, and yet I’m sure that there was a lot you wanted to go into but couldn’t. Will your next novel pick up where Daemon leaves off, or are you writing something non-related?

Suarez: FreedomTM, the sequel to Daemon, does pick up where the first book left off. I originally envisioned these two books as one story, but if selling a 440-page self-published novel was hard, then I knew that selling a 920-page one would be damned near impossible. The only person I know of who successfully sells 900+ page novels is Neal Stephenson. So I divided my story into two books. The second one will be the more shocking of the two.

swivel: Thank you for making videogaming hip and cool in your novel.  However, in the real world do you find it difficult to be a guilt-free gamer? Gaming seems to be a dirty secret that my friends and I keep from our spouses and family. How hard is it for you to publicly embrace a media that still has a negative reputation, despite its financial success?

Suarez: Videovideo gaming as a vice…yes, I’m familiar with that scarlet “G” (GamerGamer reviews). Fortunately, these books have given me an impossibly cool new ability; when my wife sees that I’ve been up all night playing multiplayer GTAIV or CrysisCrysis reviews, I can honestly say, “I’m doing research, hon!”

However, I do think there’s a sea change coming in the perception of video games. Game interfaces are going to make their way into business and social interactions. I covered some of my thoughts on this in my Long Now Foundation talk last AugustAugust reviews. There’s an entire generation that underwent a decade of training with FPS interfaces, and it’s a form of techno-literacy that the armed forces (among others) are taking very seriously. Controlling real-world machinery or processes is a likely application.

So I think the response to spouses and family needs to be: “Hey, I’m exploring the frontier of reality. You can thank me later…”

swivel: As a technology advocate and consultant, you must wrestle a lot with the pros and cons of convergence and where progress is taking our global community. Overall, do you like to view your hard drive as half full or half empty?

Suarez: That’s a difficult question. I don’t want to sound pessimistic because we will need all our optimism to make modern civilization durable and sustainable. This will probably be our generation’s Apollo Project. The fact that humanity built a globe-spanning network that’s become part of our critical infrastructure, but which is inherently not securable (the TCP-IP standard was meant to be open) is a major concern of mine.

However, there does appear to be an increasing awareness of the fragility of modern society (economic, environmental, and digital). I think we face the greatest risks when we create vast monocultures to maximize efficiency, and I’m hopeful that humanity will find a balance between efficiency and diversity in the coming years. Since humans are innovative and adaptable, I think we’ve got a good chance of coming out of this stronger and wiser. If the powers-that-be resist change, however, then I think all bets are off.

swivel: What single advancement can you foresee having the next great impact (positive or negative) on the way we live? RFID? Embedded computing? Cybernetics? Something else?

Suarez: The patenting of gene sequences, as we’ve seen already in agriculture. The genetic code of life might behave like software, but I think there’s no quicker way to despotism than the ability to own a living thing’s genetic map. There will be technological advances in this area no matter what, but I suspect a 21st or 22nd century Bill of Rights must include a clause along the lines “That all living things are inherently self-owning and enjoy all rights and privileges to their own genetic material—a right which cannot be relinquished with or without consent.” I think advances in crop genetics should be a publicly funded project. Some things shouldn’t be left to free market forces. Tinkering with the foundation of life is one of them.

swivel: What websites do you scour on a weekly basis to stay current on these technologies?

Suarez: It would be a very long list – especially since I try to stay equally abreast of social issues relating to technology. The latter is often where a technology goes from a curiosity to a major development.

I typically manage these through RSS newsfeeds . Here’s a list of the major sites I frequent (in no particular order):

www.slashdot.org
www.popurls.com
www.edge.org
www.wired.com
www.gamespy.com
www.greenoptions.com
www.technologyreview.com
www.eweek.com
www.businessweek.com
www.economist.com
www.gas2.org
www.longnow.org
www.damninteresting.com
www.halfbakery.com
http://news.google.com
www.ethicalhacker.net

swivel: You have had some big names in the IT world promoting this book for several years now. Have you become close with any of them as a result, and how much of your success do you attribute to the very sort of underground networking that you feature in your book?

Suarez: I met several new friends by writing Daemon (Rick Klau at GoogleGoogle, Stewart Brand of the Long Now, Peter Schwartz of the Global Business Network, Jeffrey Rayport at Harvard Business School, Don Donzel at Ethical Hacker, and a host of others). That’s been one of the great things about this grassroots experience. There are a lot of people who will go out of their way to help you if they feel you’re sincere and have something to add.

I attribute a great deal of the book’s success thus far to the grassroots support we received. None of these people had a financial stake in promoting Daemon or endorsing it, but they still did.

swivel: We have lavished quite a bit of praise on Daemon and look forward to reading more. What are your long-term plans? Do you dream of becoming an author that does some consulting rather than a consultant that does some writing?

Suarez: I will always keep one foot in technology. I get some of my best writing ideas while doing something else, and keeping in touch with business and new technologies is also a great source of hands-on experience which adds realism to whatever I write.

I suspect I’ll keep doing what I’ve always done: writing and messing around with technology. They’re both passions, and to me at least provide an equal outlet for creative thinking. Bottom line: I write for two audiences: people and computers.

swivel: Finally, what advice would you give to other authors out there who have a finished product that they know is wonderful but can not make it over the publishing hump?

Suarez: If you’ve tried to go the mainstream route (literary representation, etc) but had no luck, I would say self-publish. Self-publishing is not a dead-end – I’m proof of that. All you need to do is prove there’s an audience for your work. Period. Do that, and you should be well on your way to getting over that hump.

Just don’t expect people to discover your book on their own. You will need to figure out who among your audience is easiest to reach—and then reach out to them. Also, don’t rely on turn-key vanity presses to produce your book if you’re serious about having strangers buy it. Such services are fine if you want to create a project for friends and family, but if you intend to sell your book to strangers, then the cover price will need to be competitive. I mean, when was the last time you shelled out $32.95 for a paperback novel by a writer you’ve never heard of? Probably never.

Also, have realistic expectations. Our sales numbered in the hundreds for a very long time, but we kept going because among the people who actually read Daemon, a substantial majority positively reviewed it. These were people I did not know.

Which brings up an important point: don’t count your friends, family, or neighbors as valid reviewers of your work. In my opinion, only disinterested people can offer a clean assessment of a book. Sure, you can sound out friends and family on drafts, but in the final analysis, strangers must comprise the vast majority of your audience. You may as well get used to it. StrangersStrangers reviews won’t be kind, and although it might hurt, you’ll need to develop a thick skin for later – because someone somewhere is going to think what you write is crap. Guaranteed. Your goal is to find the group of people who do enjoy your writing.

The truth is, when friends and relatives told me they enjoyed Daemon, that actually didn’t mean as much as when a total stranger somewhere in Finland told me the same thing (sorry, Mom).

I would like to thank Daniel for taking the time to give us some insight into his first novel, Daemon.  My only problem with the book was not having enough of it, so hearing that the next book, FreedomTM, will pick off where Daemon left off is wonderful news.  I just have a hard time believing that it will be the more shocking of the two.

Daemon has the potential to be this year’s Da Vinci Code. Remember when Dan Brown’s book hit that tipping point, and it seemed like every person walking down the street was holding a copy?  It was like an adult Harry Potterharry potter reviews, with everyone talking about the book and comparing notes and swapping stories.  Daemon is a far better read and has the sort of broad appeal and tight writing that could easily become a cultural phenomenon.  And a deserving one, at that.  So here is your choice:  Do you wait until your aunt Susan calls you and asks if you have read the book, or do you grab it before the revolution starts so you can calmly tell aunt Susan, “Susan, I read that book back when Daniel and his wife were Xeroxing them in their garage”.