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Unmanned weaponized drones already exist—they’re widely used by America in our war efforts in the Middle East. In Kill Decision, bestselling author Daniel Suarez takes that fact and the real science behind it one step further, with frightening results.
Linda McKinney is a myrmecologist, a scientist who studies the social structure of ants. Her academic career has left her entirely unprepared for the day her sophisticated research is conscripted by unknown forces to help run an unmanned—and thanks to her research, automated—drone army. Odin is the secretive Special Ops soldier with a unique insight into the faceless enemy who has begun to attack the American homeland with drones programmed to seek, identify, and execute targets without human intervention.
Together, McKinney and Odin must slow this advance long enough for the world to recognize its destructive power, because for thousands of years the “kill decision” during battle has remained in the hands of humans—and off-loading that responsibility to machines will bring unintended, possibly irreversible, consequences. But as forces even McKinney and Odin don’t understand begin to gather, and death rains down from above, it may already be too late to save humankind from destruction at the hands of our own technology.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 19, 2012 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781101979235
- File size: 377596 KB
- Duration: 13:06:39
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from May 14, 2012
Perfectly blending nail-biting suspense with accessible science, bestseller Suarez (Daemon) establishes himself as a legitimate heir to Michael Crichton with this gripping present-day thriller. The U.S. military is in an uproar after someone used an unmanned Predator drone to destroy a mosque in Iraq during prayers, killing and wounding thousands. Since the drone bore American markings, the Arab world discounts U.S. declarations of innocence. Advances in technology have allowed such weapons to make “a kill decision without direct human involvement.” Meanwhile, professor Linda McKinney, an ant expert, has managed to tag each member of an ant colony to study the colony’s swarm behavior, but her research in Africa abruptly ends after an attack on her lab. McKinney is rescued by a shadowy figure whose true motives and loyalties are obscure, but who seeks to make use of her findings. Suarez manages to keep the reader genuinely in doubt about which characters will survive, and couples deft plotting with evocative language (e.g., Kinshasa and Brazzaville are “essentially Africa’s liver—circulating the population of the riverine interior through a pitiless Darwinian filter”). Agent: Rafe Sagalyn, Sagalyn Literary.
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