LITTLE BROTHER
Cory Doctorow
Tor Teen
Science Fiction/Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9780765319852
384 pages

• Read an Excerpt
• Author Talk –– July 2008

The hardest thing about book reviewing, for me at any rate, is seeing past your own prejudices and approaching a book as objectively as possible. We attach a negative connotation to prejudice, thinking that the resulting discrimination is bad. But there are positive prejudices. There is the prejudice of avoiding food you don't like in favor of food you love. There is enjoying an author so much that we race out and buy his or her next book without thinking. And there are those prejudices that relate to our deepest beliefs --- sometimes founded in fact, most often founded in raw emotion ---  that guide us as moral compasses.

The problem in reviewing LITTLE BROTHER is that it speaks to my prejudices: my belief in freedom, my belief in privacy, my belief in retaining the personal liberties as outlined by our Founding Fathers. Cory Doctorow pushes all the right buttons, preying on my insecurities and fears that these things will be unjustly and/or forcibly revoked. It says a lot of things I want to hear, it acts as a philosophical call to arms for anyone who believes that when we treat everyone as criminals, the terrorists achieve their strongest victory.

In LITTLE BROTHER, Marcus Yallow is a computer-savvy high school student living in San Francisco in a future so close to now the difference is barely perceptible. When he and his friends are engaged in a scavenger hunt-like game in the city, they end up witness to a horrific terrorist attack that destroys the Bay Bridge. Their proximity to Ground Zero leads to their arrests, incarceration and ruthless interrogation at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. When Marcus is finally freed, broken and terrified, he's warned not to tell anyone of his abduction or face a worse fate.  Marcus stays silent, but as he watches the DHS turn his city into a police state, stripping its citizens of personal liberties, he vows to put an end to it.

With the help of like-minded hackers, Marcus assumes the online identity of M1K3Y and sets up an underground internet called the Xnet, a theoretically impenetrable, secret network of Xboxes. From here, they plot to undermine the DHS's security measures (which they assert do NOTHING to capture terrorists) in the name of securing the freedoms granted by the Constitution. What follows is a war of wills between Marcus and the DHS as he strives to stay one step ahead of them, avoid traps set by Xnet infiltrators, and track down his lost friend, Darren, who never returned from the Gitmo-like prison where Marcus was once held.

For the most part, LITTLE BROTHER is fast paced, balancing action with thoughtful discourse on the current circumstances. The book slows down in those areas where Marcus needs to educate readers on the more technical aspects of the story (how a certain surveillance system works and, subsequently, how he plans to circumvent the system, for example). But Doctorow does a good job of taking what is no doubt an incredibly complex subject and making it accessible to any reader.

If I have any concern about LITTLE BROTHER it's this: what separates Marcus from the terrorists? Granted, he doesn't kill anyone, but disruption and mayhem are often the core tactics perpetrated by terrorists. The book does address this, and attempts are made to differentiate him from the terrorists, such as when he invokes a passage from the Declaration of Independence that argues that an unjust government needs to be overthrown. However, I'm not convinced that Marcus wins his argument. Maybe Doctorow wanted to leave this slightly ambiguous, as the question alone has prompted numerous discussions between me and my friends. Again, this author knows how to push my buttons.

Doctorow has given readers an extraordinary opportunity to seriously consider what freedom means to them, what they're willing to surrender in the name of keeping it, and what they're willing to do to reclaim it. Make no mistake: there's a reason that LITTLE BROTHER has become one of the most talked-about books of 2008. And the fact that people are talking and, perhaps for the first time, really examining the issues at hand, means that Doctorow may have accomplished exactly what he set out to do. These are issues that require intelligent discussion and careful scrutiny. To refuse to do so is the greatest betrayal of all.

     --- Reviewed by Brian Farrey (Emohawk9000@gmail.com)

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