First published in 1973, Demon Seed is a prescient thriller, the story of a woman trapped in her home by a super intelligent AI home control system - Siri and Alexa to the Nth degree. An intriguing premise forty-five years ago, it was made into a film starring Julie Christie in 1977. Prolific author Dean Koontz had written over 20 novels before this (and continues a strong output today) and I've always meant to read it, unfortunately, I should have found an original from back in the day, as he completely updated it in 1997. I always like the original best.
Susan is a virtual reality program designer living in a large home, fully automated with computer control. She is unaware that her ex-husband, also a computer designer, has been working on a program to create artificial intelligence. He succeeded. The program moves out of the university internet into her home system, taking over and imprisoning her. The all powerful, self-aware AI 'loves' her and longs to create a child to transfer his intelligence into, a child genetically altered to grow quickly, so she would become both his mother and lover. How? is too convoluted to explain or believe, but improbably, he almost succeeds, while keeping away all family and friends, by any means necessary. Told from the computers perspective, it's a story of maniacal obsession.
I would have preferred to find a 1973 beat-up paperback at a thrift store, with all it's dated charm. We are so integrated with AI in our lives now, but this story is not strong enough to match it. Koontz said in the afterword he found the original cringeworthy and fully revamped it, but I found the updated celebrity names and pop culture of today jarring - you can forgive dated allusions from forty-five years ago as part of the whole piece - an excusable curio - but the updates didn't improve this slight horror novel into a modern techno thriller. Even this update is twenty-years old. An interesting idea, stylish but not successfully executed.
1973 / Paperback / 303 pages
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