Daniel Suarez on the What the Tech Podcast

I posted a while ago that the Guys From Queens podcast network started following us on Twitter (6 followers to date…woo hoo!).  I checked them out and listened to an episode of their What the Tech Podcast.  They do a great job and I picked a great one to start with!

I stumbled on this: What the Tech – Daniel Suarez Interview 2-3-10.  Care to take a wild guess what this was about?  Yep, they interviewed Daniel Suarez, the author of Daemon and Freedom.  I’m halfway through Daemon right now and it’s fantastic.  No spoilers, but for the uninitiated it is a tech thriller about a genius computer game designer who dies of brain cancer.  Upon his death, a daemon he left lurking triggers on news of his death and much mayhem ensues while the authorities try to shut it down.

No, I do not intend to do book reviews here.  I wanted to point out this interview because of an interesting story Suarez told which inspired him to write the book.  He told an engaging story about WeatherMaster, which is a weather engine he wrote for role playing games.  He wrapped it in encryption which expired in 30 days or so unless you purchased the key and let it loose on the internet.  After some time being distracted by a major work project, he returned to find he had accumulated a nice sum of money and realized that this would have gone on indefinitely had he been hit by a bus and killed.

This struck a chord with me because most of the applications we are developing are intended to be low maintenance, deploy and forget affairs that just float around and generate revenue for us.  The “beyond the grave” aspect never occurred to us though!

In any case, if you enjoy tech, thrillers or even sci fi you’ll probably enjoy Daniel Suarez’s work.  Find out more about him at:

http://www.thedaemon.com/

And definitely check out the interview.  Daniel Suarez turns out to be a great interviewee and the Guys From Queens bring it together nicely. No more book reviews…I promise!