Little Brother

I hesitate to call this 'good.' It's certainly not gut-wrenchingly terrible, like Ready Player One or Armada, but it's kind of in the same family. A middle-aged hypernerd writing about cool teenagers who fall for hot cool babes and use the word 'vintage' way too much. The characters are very much mouthpieces who think and like the exact things that the writer does. And the book is more of a listing of what the author thinks are important or good, with a really dumb story tacked on. Although, this feels like more of an academic lecture. Also, it's better in that the point that Doctorow is making is a better one.

It's mostly a book about privacy and abuse of surveillance and the danger of ultra-nationalism and that very American brand of conservative and republican fake patriotism. I don't agree with every point he makes, but most I do, which might have made this one easier to stomach that the diarrhea Ernest Cline deposited on the page.

If you read it, be prepared to read a middle aged nerd write the phrase 'she was h4wt- as in hot.'

You have been warned.

Cory Doctorow’s intentions in writing Little Brother are many and varied and all of them worthy. This is a timely book that tackles some hard issues being felt not only in the US but around the world and does so in a cheeky, entertaining way while arguing very sensibly for reason to prevail.

Marcus is a high school student in San Francisco of a few years from now when ‘security’ systems have become much more pervasive. Even the classroom halls have monitors that identify students by studying their gait — face recognition systems being deemed ‘unconstitutional’. But Marcus is adept at fooling such software, especially when he wants to cut class to play the latest episode of an online treasure hunt game. Then terrorists blow up the Oakland Bay Bridge, Marcus and friends are picked up by Department of Homeland Security goons, and when Marcus refuses to unlock his phone for them he is tortured, abused and scared into compliance before being dumped back on the streets. One of his friends, Darryl — who was injured in the panic after the bombing— doesn’t emerge from custody and Marcus vows to hit back. So begins a new chapter in a city where freedom and civil disobedience go hand in hand.

Little Brother tackles the issue of national security head on. How far can civil rights be curtailed in the interests of safety? When does a state begin to subvert the very things it is meant to stand for? And when it does, who has won — the people or the terrorists? Doctorow is very technology savvy and through the book he shows that the security counter-measures that are meant to keep us safe are, in the final analysis, ineffectual against truly determined terrorists and manage only to keep the innocent populace scared and subdued. It reminded me also of the chilling World War II poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller that starts, ‘They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.’ (Wiki it if it’s new to you.) But Little Brother is in no way preachy or didactic — I read it in a single sitting and enjoyed it thoroughly. It does however have at its heart some powerful and eternal truths. Most notably the fact that when people of good conscience place their trust wholly in their government and don’t continually question its actions and push it to find a better way to cure our shared problems, we often end up with the leadership we deserve.

Takes a bit of time to get going because of Doctorow's tendency to repeatedly stop and dump large amounts of information on the reader. But once it gets going it is a pretty good thriller - even if you're not a teenager anymore - and one that makes it's central point very effectively: that trying to trade liberty for security is not only wrong in principle but ineffective - or even counter-productive - in practice.