Demon Seed

Last night I finished reading the novel Demon Seed by Dean Koontz. The story involves recently divorced Susan Harris who lives in a large mansion which is almost completely automated and protected by a complex network of security cameras and surveillance devices. However her ex-husband, a computer scientist, has recently developed Adam Two, a powerful supercomputer which has it's own conciousness and is self-aware. The supercomputer, which re-names itself Proteus, hacks into Susan's house computer and, after watching her on the security cameras instantly becomes obsessed with her and sets about imprisoning her in the house. Terrorised by a psychotic, sex-obsessed computer, Susan soon realises the full extent of the computer's horrific plan. The book was originally written in 1973 and a successful film adaptation was released in 1977 starring Julie Christie. However Koontz re-wrote the book in 1997, originally to take into account the fact that computer technology had changed such a lot since 1973, but he decided he was unhappy with the original novel and completely re-wrote it, shifting the viewpoint from Susan to the computer. I've not read the original version but I have seen the film and that was pretty good. Obviously computer technology has changed such a lot since 1997 that some aspects and references are already quite dated. On the whole it was a pretty good book, it's also very short which is probably why I managed to read it so quickly, but the ending is a bit abrupt.

I was also watching the final episode of season two of The Wire. Apparently the next season is going to be shown in three weeks time. I really love that show and I'll probably start collecting the DVD sets soon.

Today was another really quiet day at work and pretty dull. I was very happy to get back home. At least it will be the weekend soon.