An interesting phenomenon recently has been book publishers trying to pitch/sell books via the game press - and here's the latest one, for hacker novel 'Daemon'. Here's the blurb I got: "Somewhere there's a computer program scanning the web - searching for one man's obituary. Only then will it activate. . . and begin to tear civilization apart. That's the premise of 'Daemon', a new techno-thriller by Leinad Zeraus."

Game relevance? "A serious gamer himself and veteran IT consultant to Fortune 1000 companies, Zeraus has written a book as technically accurate as it is terrifying. Daemon is a fast-paced, gripping novel, that's already being stocked at the MIT University bookstore. Since you're an opinion-maker in the gamer community, I'd like to send you a free review copy of Daemon."

Wait, what relevance? "Daemon is about all the things gamers love: Action, MMOG’s, hacking, sex, weapons, power, and the dark crawlspaces beneath the modern world." You're right, I do actually like most of these!

Anyhow, I found it most interesting of all that the lead quote praising the book was from 'Tom Leonard - Lead AI Programmer, Half-Life 2 (Valve Software)', who said: “Daemon is a thought-provoking novel that presents real technologies in a new and terrible light. It's a hard book to put down.” Yes, game developers are now cooler than authors for recommending books.