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Book review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
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I'm a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco's sunny Mission district, and that makes
me one of the most surveilled people in the world. My name is Marcus Yallow, but back when
this story starts, I was going by w1n5t0n. Pronounced "Winston."
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As is obvious from the very first paragraph of _Little Brother_, Cory Doctorow's new book
begins with a bang and pretty much keeps up the pace straight through to the very end of the
story.
Marcus and his friends are typical teenagers in a not-too-distant future. They worry about
dating, getting into college, and how to skip class and not get caught. Then one day they
are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when a 9/11-style terrorist attack occurs in
San Francisco and they, along with many others, get picked up in a Homeland Security sweep.
Marcus soon finds himself under constnat suspicion and surveillance by his own government,
even as he begins to ask himself and others, including the adults around him, why he is
being forced to conform to a culture of fear or risk being labeled unAmerican.
As Marcus faces very real risks in objecting to being tracked and bullied by Homeland
Security, school administrators, and even his own father, who rationalizes the increasing
government surveillance, Marcus discovers the connections, both good and bad, between
technology and government control.
Without any doubt, this is Cory Doctorow's best work yet, both in the quality of the writing
and the very powerful story he has created. In a culture where adults constantly accuse
teenagers of being self-absorbed and apathetic, Cory has created a character who reflects
the very real political and technological savvy that many of today's teenagers actually
demonstrate. Additionally, the character of Marcus is very believable: he isn't a
supergenius and he isn't a saint. He fucks up but he learns from his mistakes. Similarly,
despite the fact that many of the adults insist that "no one who isn't guilty has anything
to worry about" (an attitude which sadly I have heard a number of times since 9/11), there
are some adults who try to have honest conversations with Marcus about the history of the
civil rights movement. Along the way, Marcus finds out about cryptography, the history of
protests in San Francisco, and how easy it is to cow even adults into conformity and
silence.
Reading _Little Brother_ reminded me of one of the books that changed my way of thinking,
and that was reading Thoreau's _Walden_ and _Civil Disobedience_ when I was sixteen. Since
then, there have become even more ways of demonstrating to teenagers that they are always
under suspicion, including more cameras, methods for tracking through cell phones, and even
drug tests you can buy in the local pharmacy and force your kid to take. Being the object of
such suspicion is hard on anyone, and finding ways to resist, especially once such attitudes
of fear and suspicion have leaked out to become culture and nationwide, becomes a way of
taking back power when others would prefer you feel powerless.
And Cory has indeed provided information about modes of resistance, for the book also
includes in the introductory material and the back matter a lot of information where
teenagers and teachers can find resources to learn more about cryptography, organizing
activist groups, and just about anything else you need to get involved in discussions and
demonstrations of resistance to the culture of fear. In addition, at least one group has
been inspired by _Little Brother_ to begin posting project howtos. Here is the post from
Cory.
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My next novel, Little Brother, is coming out in a couple weeks -- it's a
young adult novel about hackers who use technology to challenge
authority. The folks from Instructables saw an early copy of the book
and were really inspired by all the ingenuity demonstrated by the book's
heroes, so they've made a series of HOWTOs in the voice of M1k3y, the
techno-guerrilla who tells the story in Little Brother.
The first one has just gone live: Photo-Emulsion Screen Printing, a
HOWTO for making t-shirts for your movement's wardrobe needs.
Photo-emulsion screen printing:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Photo-emulsion-Screen-Printing/
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I like to think that good books always have at least a tiny kernel of subversion to them
and, by that yardstick, _Little Brother_ is a very very good book.
Other reviews:
Farah Mendlesohn's review in Strange Horizons
http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2008/04/little_brother_.shtml
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) alexx_kay's review
http://alexx-kay.livejournal.com/211208.html
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: radical
Current Music: 1776 soundtrack
Tags: books, coryd, media studies, politics, reviews
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