Little Brother

Features

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 384 pages
• Published by: Tor Teen April 29, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0765319853
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0765319852
• Book Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Weighs: 1 pounds

Product Review


“A wonderful, important book…I’d recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I’ve read this year, and I’d want to get it into the hands of as many smart thirteen-year-olds, male and female, as I can. Because I think it’ll change lives. Because some kids, maybe just a few, won’t be the same after they’ve read it. Maybe they’ll change politically, maybe technologically. Maybe it’ll just be the first book they loved or that spoke to their inner geek. Maybe they’ll want to argue about it and disagree with it. Maybe they’ll want to open their computer and see what’s in there. I don’t know. It made me want to be thirteen again right now, and reading it for the first time.” —Neil Gaiman, author of Sandman and American Gods on Little Brother

“A rousing tale of techno-geek rebellion.” --Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies, Pretties, and Specials, on Little Brother

“A worthy younger sibling to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother is lively, precocious, and most importantly, a little scary.” --Brian K. Vaughan, author of the graphic novel Y: The Last Man on Little Brother

“A tale of struggle familiar to any teenager, about those moments when you choose what your life is going to mean.” —Steven Gould, author of Jumper, on Little Brother

“A believable and frightening tale of a near-future San Francisco … Filled with sharp dialogue and detailed descriptions… within a tautly crafted fictional framework.” -Publishers Weekly starred review on Little Brother (Featured in PW Children’s e-newsletter)

“Readers will delight in the details of how Marcus attempts to stage a techno-revolution … Buy multiple copies; this book will be h4wt (that’s ‘hot,’ for the nonhackers).” -Booklist starred review on Little Brother (Selected as a Booklist “Review of the Day”)

“Marcus is a wonderfully developed character: hyperaware of his surroundings, trying to redress past wrongs, and rebelling against authority … Raising pertinent questions and fostering discussion, this techno-thriller is an outstanding first purchase.” -School Library Journal starred review on Little Brother

"Little Brother is generally awesome in the more vernacular sense: It's pretty freaking cool a fluid, instantly ingratiating fiction writer he's also terrific at finding the human aura shimmering around technology." -The Los Angeles Times on Little Brother

"Scarily realistic…Action-packed with tales of courage, technology, and demonstrations of digital disobedience as the technophile's civil protest." --Andrew “bunnie” Huang, author of Hacking the Xbox, on Little Brother

"The right book at the right time from the right author--and, not entirely coincidentally, Cory Doctorow's best novel yet." --John Scalzi, bestselling author of Old Man’s War, on Little Brother

“I was completely hooked in the first few minutes. Great work.” --Mitch Kapor, inventor of Lotus 1-2-3 and co-founder of the EFF, on Little Brother

“Little Brother is a brilliant novel with a bold argument: hackers and gamers might just be our country's best hope for the future.” --Jane McGonigal, designer of the alternate-reality game I Love Bees on Little Brother

“Little Brother sounds an optimistic warning. It extrapolates from current events to remind us of the ever-growing threats to liberty. But it also notes that liberty ultimately resides in our individual attitudes and actions. In our increasingly authoritarian world, I especially hope that teenagers and young adults will read it—and then persuade their peers, parents and teachers to follow suit.” —Dan Gillmor, technology journalist, author of We the Media on Little Brother

“It’s about growing up in the near future where things have kept going on the way they’ve been going, and it’s about hacking as a habit of mind, but mostly it’s about growing up and changing and looking at the world and asking what you can do about that. The teenage voice is pitch-perfect. I couldn’t put it down, and I loved it.” —Jo Walton, author of Farthing on Little Brother

“Read this book. You’ll learn a great deal about computer security, surveillance and how to counter it, and the risk of trading off freedom for ‘security.’ And you’ll have fun doing it.” —Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media on Little Brother

“I know many science fiction writers engaged in the cyber-world, but Cory Doctorow is a native…We should all hope and trust that our culture has the guts and moxie to follow this guy. He’s got a lot to tell us.” --Bruce Sterling

“Cory Doctorow doesn't just write about the future--I think he lives there.” --Kelly Link, author of Stranger Things Happen

“Doctorow throws off cool ideas the way champagne generates bubbles[he] definitely has the goods.” --San Francisco Chronicle

“Doctorow is one of sci-fi's most exciting young writers.” --Cargo Magazine

Product Description
Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Reader Reviews
In some ways, this book harks back to the juveniles of fifties as written by some of the great masters of sf, most especially Heinlein. Like those earlier books, it portrays teenagers that are intelligent, resourceful, game-loving, and confrontational, but are still at times prone to making stupid mistakes in the name of peer-group status. In other words, they are real teenagers. The setting is the near future, when some ill-defined terrorist group decides to blow up the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Marcus, our hero, and several of his friends are picked up in a rather wide sweep by Homeland Security forces as possible suspects. And therein lies the tale, as the actions of the security forces clash violently with Marcus's idea of what is right and proper in the supposed land-of-the-free America. What Marcus decides to do about this situation is an instructional manual to the reader in just how personal freedom and privacy have been restricted and what can be done about it in today's very high-tech world of security cameras, RFIDs, cryptography, computer databases, and the insidious insinuation of propaganda both at our schools and into everything we see and hear on the internet and our TVs and from the mouths of our political leaders. The story bubbles with suspense, and the actions that Marcus takes are very believable as something a seventeen-year old could actually do. It is very easy to identify with Marcus and become very sympathetic to his cause, while the situation itself is stark enough to frighten the daylights out of the reader as being all too possible. The info-dumps along the way not only impart some very necessary information to the reader, but are handled very much the way Heinlein did it, as things that are necessary for the hero to either know or learn about to accomplish his desires, making them easy to swallow. The techniques and technology presented are real, as some of the afterword material to this book details. The other characters of this book, while not presented with the detail that Marcus is (almost a given in any first-person narration), are both intriguing and in some cases frightening. Marcus's father is a major case in point, as a man with liberal leanings who nevertheless finds himself driven to support the majority view out of fear for his son, and Marcus's social studies teacher, who is very reminiscent of some of the `mentors' of Heinlein's books, as her willingness to engage her students in free-wheeling debate and attempts to get them to think for themselves leads to a very plausible and ugly fate. It is just such touches that make the whole situation ring with that touch of reality that marks excellent science fiction. The politics of this book are decidedly left-wing. The Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security come in for some merciless beatings, but the reasoning behind such depictions is carefully laid out and form a clarion call to all Americans to look carefully at just what we are giving up in the name of `security'. Perhaps it should be compared and contrasted (as one of those infamous school assignments I don't fondly remember) with something like Tom Clancy's Executive Orders, which presents the right-wing rationale of why and when the government should be allowed to exceed the boundaries of the Constitution and its amendments. Unlike the YA material of the fifties, this book does not ignore an item of great concern to almost every teenager, namely sex. I found the presentation of this material both appropriate to the characters and handled realistically without being too graphic. However, it might make this book inappropriate for pre-teens. Teenagers should find this book a riveting read, with characters they can identify with, and like all really good YA books, adults should find this book just as riveting, with concepts and philosophies presented that require thought and contemplation. This is the best book I've read out of the 2008 crop so far, and I'd be very much surprised if it doesn't at least make the 2009 Hugo nomination list, if not take the award itself. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat) Comments (2) | | (Report this)