Little Brother | 
 enlarge | Author: Cory Doctorow
Publisher: Tor Teen
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $7.96 (44%)
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Rating:  76 reviews
Sales Rank: 1992
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.5
ISBN: 0765319853
EAN: 9780765319852
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 71 more reviews...
 Security and Freedom May 27, 2008
Patrick Shepherd (San Jose, CA USA)
39 out of 43 found this review helpful
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)
I enjoyed it immensely April 29, 2008
Reilly Hayes (Mill Valley, CA United States)
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
I enjoyed this novel immensely. I want to make that clear from the start. There are many reviews that are going to talk only about how important and topical Little Brother is. They're going to talk about how this novel needed to be written. They're all right, but I think everybody should know how much FUN it is to read (even while you're being outraged by how possible it all is). I started reading it and didn't put it down until I was finished.
Little Brother is the first-person narrative of Marcus, a 17 year-old with a talent for technology. Doctorow gets Marcus' voice just right. He alternates between street-swagger and vulnerability, between naivete and expertise. I found him to be an entirely believable contradiction, which is a pretty good definition of a teenager. At first, I found Marcus' love of explaining technology a little irritating, but I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized that it reminded me of my own poorly restrained tendency to try to explain computers to anyone who would listen (35 years ago). Nothing reaches you quite like seeing your own flaws in the hero.
Marcus finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time. Without revealing any plot details, suffice it to say that he comes to the attention of a law-enforcement agency with a broad remit and limited oversight. Deceit and mistrust test his family and friendships as he comes face to face with the conflict between personal safety and the responsibilities of a citizen.
Cory Doctorow has managed to create a wonderful fusion of science fiction, action novel, political thriller, and whimsical romp. It's very hard to bring those elements together, but he has succeeded admirably. I haven't seen anyone pull this off since "The Long Run" by Daniel Keys Moran.
Buy it. Read it. Buy copies for your kids. Once they start reading it, they'll finish it.
An important and timely work May 1, 2008
Jackson W. Nash (Atlanta,Georgia)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I was halfway through Little Brother last night when I went to bed. As I lay in the darkness, all I could think about was the book. The questions it raised, the insecurities it provoked in me.
After about an hour of this I got up and went into the living room, sat down and finished it.
Few times in my life have I encountered a piece of art that reflected the zeitgeist so clearly.
This is a fabulously brave and important book, and you will hopefully learn a great deal by reading this.
Cheers to Mr. Doctorow!
This was like reading Ender's Game and the Diamond Age for the first time.
tense frightening thriller May 17, 2008
Harriet Klausner
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Every student in Marcus' high school is under surveillance through cameras both in and out of class, spy ware in the school computers and identification cards with microchips inside that let the powers to be know where they are at all times. Marcus is a computer guru who lives to beat the system; he and some friends cut school to participate in a scavenger hunt sponsored by a large corporation.
While they are trying to decipher a clue, an explosion occurs followed by a mushroom cloud rising in the sky. Terrorists hit the Bay Bridge and a San Francisco BART station. Marcus' friend Darryl is injured so they stop a Homeland Security vehicle. The teens are treated like terrorists and taken to prison where they are mentally and physically tortured. Three of them are freed but Darryl is nowhere to be found. Homeland Security has turned San Francisco into a police state, but Marcus knows the truth and organizes a resistance.
LITTLE BROTHER is a tense frightening thriller because with little spin it comes from headlines since 9/11. Marcus is a fighter yet a reluctant hero as he just wants freedom without insistent government meddling, peeking, and intruding under the guise of red alerts. Cory Doctorow has modernized 1984 with this exhilarating cautionary thriller; though one must wonder whether he will receive the Rushdie treatment from the Patriot actors.
Harriet Klausner
fight for the right May 18, 2008
Too old Cypherpunk (Iowa)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I read this as a free download from Cory's website, as I usually do (Thanks for the freedom Cory!). And then I ordered a copy just to have on the shelf for my daughter to discover someday. It's that good. And the ideas are that important.
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