The Demon Seed - Dean Koontz

There is no doubt that computers are becoming more powerful, but more intelligent? NASA used computers to send men to the moon and these were only as powerful as a 30 year old Amstrad. The computer itself has no real intelligence as it has to mimic whatever a human puts into it. Therefore, it is Artificial Intelligence that is becoming more intelligent. This is obvious in computer games but also in real life with automated banking and voice recognition software. However, computers are still not truly intelligent as they still rely on us to input their data and rarely learn for themselves. What would happen if we created a computer that could think for itself like a ...  Read the complete review

"This darkness troubles me. I yearn for the light. This silence is so deep. I long for the voices, the drumming of rain, the whistle of wind, music. Why are you being so cruel to me? Let me see. Let me hear. Let me live. I beg of you." So opens the story of Adam Two – the first self-aware machine intelligence, designed to be the servant of mankind. Demon Seed is something of a departure for Dean Koontz away from his maniacal villains and into quasi-science fiction albeit, as ever, with an element of horror. The story was originally published in 1977 and spawned a film starring Julie Christie. The version I read was updated and published ...  Read the complete review

Demon Seed. Dean Koontz (1997) & (2007). There are two dates to this book as the edition I have just read was published in 2007 and I suspect, though I have no way of knowing for sure, that it has been slightly updated from the 10 year old version, after all, 10 years in computing is a long time. This is relevant as this book is about a computer that has artificial intelligence, The Prometheus Project, or Adam Two to be precise. Well, actually, it is more than artificial intelligence, it is awareness, wants, needs, desires and emotions like never developed before. Okay, rewind. I slated the last Koontz book that I read and ...  Read the complete review

Demon Seed - Dean Koontz ISBN 0747234892 (Currently available from bol.com for 4.79) Dean Koontz is a prolific writer, and like many writers who seem to be a one-person production line of books, he can be hit and miss. His books can also date quite dramatically, as he often refers to people from popular culture. Fortunately, for his many fans, he seems to be well-aware of this and this is largely why he completely revised his book Demon Seed - allegedly because:"Reading it recently, I squinted so much that I began to develop the squint-eyed look of Clint Eastwood." At the mention of the name, many people of a certain ...  Read the complete review

This book was a laugh if nothing else. What was Koontz thinking of when he wrote this? Maybe I shouldn't ask. The story centres on Susan Harris who is a successful computer games programmer. Susan lives in a large house by herself since she split up with her husband who was a computer science researcher. This house is amazing, everything in it is controlled by computers - from the air conditioning to the window shutters and the security system. Bit of a bad idea when you look back on it. Susans ex was working on artificial intelligence in computers. He and his team were basically trying to make a computer that could think for itself. Working ...  Read the complete review