Little Brother

Little Brother is the fourth published novel by Canadian author Cory Doctorow, the co-editor of the popular blog BoingBoing. As hinted by the name, the novel is inspired by Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, but also serves as SF's second great take on cryptology and online security, the first naturally being Stephenson's classic Cryptonomicon.

San Franciso in the near future. Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for a terrorist attack that destroys the Bay Bridge and kills over four thousand people. A group of high school students playing an alternate-reality web game are caught up in the resulting chaos and are interrogated by the Department of Homeland Security. Denied access to legal representation and threatened with torture and even execution should they reveal what has happened to them, they are released just before the seven-day limit, after which the police would being actively investigating any outstanding missing persons reports following the attack. One of the students, Marcus Yallow, becomes determined to expose the DHS' fascist tactics and sets up an online network - dubbed Xnet as it uses X-Boxes rather than easier-to-trace PCs to communicate - to undermine their security efforts and expose their attempts to subvert the law to pry into the lives of innocent citizens rather than actually doing anything that would prevent another terrorist attack. Pretty soon his online persona is public enemy number one for the DHS and they begin closing the net around him and his friends.

Little Brother is an angry book. Doctorow is clearly pissed off about the USA's reaction to the War on Terror and how the hard-won civil liberties of the country, and even its Constitution and Bill of Rights, are being treated as optional in the name of defending people from terrorist attack, even though the actual chances of being caught up in a terrorist incident are miniscule whilst the chances of having their freedoms infringed by repressive laws are overwhelming. In effect, in the book the DHS is spreading the very fear and terror that al-Qaeda wants to achieve. This is quite effective, and whilst critics of the book complain that the treatment of American citizens is unrealistic, the existence of Guantanmo Bay basically proves otherwise. It's also worth noting that the DHS in the book is being motivated by another terrorist attack on a scale greater than that of 9-11, which puts a slightly different spin on things.

Little Brother may be angry, but it's also hugely readable. Like Cryptonomicon before it, Doctorow goes to some trouble to lace explanations of cryptology and internet security into the text whilst keeping the story flowing, and pulls this off well. Characterisation is pretty good, and what happens to Marcus is so outrageous you find yourself cheering him on even if he does come over as being fairly unlikeable through large chunks of the narrative (particularly when he completely forgets to inform the parents of one of his friends still being held by the DHS that their son is still alive). The methods he and his friends develop to outwit the DHS are fairly smart and amusing as well. The pages fly past and the pace and tension ramp up admirably, but for such a cynical book, the ending does come a little out of the blue and feels more than slightly cheesily upbeat. Also, those non-Americans who don't quite get how the relationship in power between the individual states and the federal government in Washington works may find the ending a bit mystifying as well, but it tracks.

Little Brother (****) is an angry, polemical book which I suspect will provoke both admiration and outrage depending on what side of the civil liberties in the face of terrorism debate you fall on. It's also a smart and clever book with a deep sense of cynicism which is slightly undermined by the happy-ish ending, but the journey remains entertaining. The book is available now in the UK from Voyager and in the USA by Tor.

Little Brother is one of those books that can make you an evangelist. You start recommending it to everyone you know. Then to people you barely know. Then you start walking up to random strangers... Okay, not quite. But this is a book that I really think SHOULD be read be every informed citizen. Let me tell you what it's about, and hopefully you'll see why.

As the book opens, Marcus coerces three close friends into ditching high school so that their team can play their favorite online/real world clue hunting game. They're out and about in San Francisco when they hear and feel a massive explosion. Suddenly, there is chaos everywhere, and one of Marcus's friends is hurt. Being kids, they look to authority to help in a time of crisis. They try to flag down either the cops or an ambulance, but who they actually get to stop are some military guys. From there, things start happening fast. Marcus and his friends are detained on U.S. soil for six days and treated like terrorists, simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eventually, three of the four kids are released and severely threatened not to tell what happened to them. They don't even know what became of their injured friend. The ordeal affects the three in different ways. As they get back into "normal life," they discover that life is anything but normal. Homeland Security has taken over San Francisco. Being San Francisco, the city protests. The louder the protests, the tighter Homeland Security grips down on the city. This causes even more extreme forms of protest, and suddenly it's like a vicious circle between the rights of the people and the control of the government--for our "protection." Marcus and his friends are intimately caught up in the events that follow an act of terror they had nothing to do with.

This is being marketed as a young adult novel only because the protagonists are teenagers, but I am a 39-year-old woman, and let me tell you--this book is freakin' scary! Not in a Stephen King sort of way, but in a so realistic I can see this stuff already happening in the world around me sort of way. I AM a San Franciscan, so I can smile at the entirely realistic way the reactions of this city's inhabitants was portrayed. Setting the story here was brilliant, because, yeah, San Francisco does not sit idly by. But you don't have to be radical in the least to be worried by what Doctorow has eerily predicted in this novel. And once you've read it, you'll look at a lot of things happening in the world today with new eyes. And then you too many become an evangelist.

When I began reading this book I disliked it. I felt that it was really talking down to its audience. I lost that feeling after a while, but I never did feel that Marcus rang true as a 17-year-old boy. Ange even less so as a 17-year-old girl. I did enjoy the geekiness of the book, but when Doctorow gave Alan Turing all the credit for breaking Enigma, I began to trust the accuracy of that information less. Intellectual giant that Turing was, he was not the person who broke Enigma. (If you are interested in this, I highly recommend Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two (Foreign Intelligence Book Series).) The Privacy Manifesto aspect of the book seemed extremely heavy-handed. The plot moved well but was implausible. The sex seemed even more implausible than the plot. In the end, I guess the question is: would I recommend this book to a teenager as a readable primer on privacy issues? The answer is a reluctant "no."

In one sense this is a great book for students as it encourages critical thinking and discussion. It's a reminder that while the popular-media is selling ennui YOU are way, way more creative than that.

In another sense, this book is a timely reminder to adults in America that they've bought into the give-up brand more than the kids. This book is a HOWL: Wake up; Gitmo's coming for you next sucka.

Doctorow has never written such a cohesive narrative with characters that really feel alive and absolutely current. Which is funny since he wrote Little Brother in only 8 weeks. Perhaps that's what adds to the Kerouac undercurrent in the book which actually mix wonderfully with the 1984/Mission Impossible action. The less you know the more you'll enjoy it. Peace.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down from the moment I started reading. It was the kind of book that had heart-racing moments, genuinely emotional moments and times where I laughed out loud. I read another review indicating that the villains could have used some fleshing out. While there is some truth to that, I don't feel it detracted from the story for me. I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates the spirit of rebellion with a liberal dose of current pop-culture thrown in.