Dean Ray Koontz

A computer with human-like qualities of artificial intelligence develops criminal obsessions and takes over the completely automated home of Susan Harris

Demon Seed

Dean Koontz

The seemingly deserted town of Snowfield, California, is filled with dead bodies, and lurking beneath the surface is an evil force bent on destruction, in this terrifying novel of suspense. Reissue. Movie tie-in.

Colton Ray

It's been a while since I encountered a book so truly deserving of a one-star rating. This was absolute shit. How can you take such an insane premise as "self-aware computer house traps woman and forces her to be impregnated with its electronic 'seed'" and turn it into such a stupid, stupid book? Well, for one, you have it be written by complete hack Dean Koontz, who couldn't write to save his life. His prose is enough of a crime, but like a rotten apple with a worm in it, you also get the prize of hearing Koontz on his trademark author soapbox. He can't resist dropping his banal reactionary political views into his books. Why doesn't an editor slice those sections out like tumors?!

The novel is told in first-person by the computer, who rambles on and on like a lecherous uncle about how pure and submissive the woman in the house is, eventually mind-controlling an escaped rapist to inseminate her before eventually losing the upper hand and getting shut down permanently. Koontz says that he intended it as a satire about controlling and rapey men, but he's so patently incapable of humor that I found nothing satirical beneath the surface. Aside from the premise, which was potentially interesting, the whole thing sounds like something written down by a horny teenage writer in his bedroom late at night, dick in hand. Flop sweat is just dripping from the pages.

The book was written in the 70s, but Koontz revised this edition twenty years later in 1997, as he makes painfully obvious by constant name-dropping of actresses he desperately wants to seduce. Seriously, there are pages about how sexy Winona Ryder is/was (which I agree of course, but it doesn't belong in a fictional novel.) This new version seems markedly worse in every way, and the prose is still gratingly amateur. It's a shame because the original sounded more interesting, with a dual narrative and early 70s computer tech. The 90s version is pure cheese schlock, pushed out to make some bucks.

So Demon Seed is bad and Koontz should feel bad for putting this low-quality crap out and getting rich off it. Every time I read him, I am stunned by the pairing of gonzo interesting genre plots and bottom-of-the-barrel, flunked-out-creative-writing-101 level prose. Maybe one day, I'll check out the original edition of the book (which has an amazing psychedelic cover) but probably not. At any rate, run, run far away from this gross thing, and instead, watch the 2015 movie Ex Machina, which explores similar territory about AI and human relationships in a much more intellectual and entertaining way, unlike this exploitative trash.

Sasha Mann

Story opens with a strange sort of passage. Someone is talking to the reader,but we don't yet quite know who.  Story sets up for a literal smart house (like that could never go wrong) as well as some truly great early foreshadowing of what is to come later in the story. The sense of unease as we get the story through the lens of what is our villain for this story.  Things happen at a pretty fast pace and we find that the AI has been able to accomplish quite a lot. To be honest it is a bit unbelievable in my opinion. The ending comes fast and I am left feeling underwhelmed. Would have loved a more in depth look into the destruction at the end. 


Demon Seed

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