Little Brother fits in perfectly with the rest of Doctorow's body of work: intriguing plots marred by two-dimensional characters who don't actually interact with one another so much as they preach at each other. This tendency isn't quite the narrative buzzkill as it is elsewhere, but it doesn't make the book any more fun to read.

His characters are leaden caricatures without a hint of subtlety. The government henchfolk are Evil with a capital-E, the supporters of the new regime are mindless drones who seem to forget each frustration and lesson as soon as they've happened, and our hero's friends are all good but apparently weak willed. Meanwhile, Marcus, while no paragon of virtue, is simply too good to be true. In fact so many of his beliefs and interests are ported from Doctorow's posts at BoingBoing that I began to feel that Marcus was even less of a character and more of a surrogate for Doctorow's wish fulfillment: an anti-establishment "hacker" who speaks 1337, has a host of neat au courant interests, loves cutting edge bands, believes in the boilerplate of the EFF and the ACLU and gets the girl too!

Not that he doesn't have doubts and fears, but at no point did I ever think that he'd change his ways. No sooner does he worry that he might be going to far but something comes up to prove him right. Over and over again: Will our hero persevere? Of course! Why worry? Especially after the fourth crisis of faith.

Is it an informative read? Yeah. There's a lot of talk about civil liberties and networks and internet privacy that's worth reading. Is it a fun read? Not even close. Between the seemingly constant preaching and the completely unsatisfying conclusion, I finished the book simply to say I was done with it. And I am: I'm done with this book and, unless someone convinces me otherwise, I am done with Doctorow's work.

I believe that Doctorow has an excellent foundation in his premise. However, I must agree with several other reviews in that his characters (both good and evil) are one-dimensional and completely unrealistic. I like his ideas and respect what seems to be his beliefs, however I feel that a potentially good story has been sacrificed at the expense of the author attempting to push his political opinions on the world at large. The entire work is convoluted with dialogue about the authors opinions.

Our world would be better if every teen read this book. Pushes the reader to think about patriotism, the constitution and the purpose of government. Emphasizes that an individual can make a difference.

Speaks clearly to the abuses of authority we have lived with since 911. More over, the author truly groks the hacker ethos and captures it well.

Incidentally, I downloaded it for free from the author's web-site and read it on-line.
Creative Commons license.

It's ironic that Marcus, the main character of this novel, is so painfully aware of his own l'esprit de l'escalier (literally, "stairway wit" -- the witty comeback you think of after it's too late to use it). "Little Brother" is one big example of Doctorow's own l'esprit de l'escalier. If only we lived in a world where the people who work for the Department of Homeland Security were transparently one-dimensional and evil, if only DHS were massively more invasive into every facet of our lives instead of just having useless airport security checks, and if only Doctorow were a hacker who was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time during a terrorist attack. If only all of those would come true, then Doctorow would save the day. By the time you reach the conclusion, wherein Marcus somehow ends up as a blogger on a site not entirely unlike Doctorow's own BoingBoing, the sense of l'esprit de l'escalier is so palpable that you could cut it with a knife. Unsurprising, since you've been wading through it for the past 350 pages.

I entered into this book as an entirely sympathetic audience. Several of the authors who offered up enthusiastic reviews are ones whose work I admire and whose recommendations are usually spot-on. I've donated to both the ACLU and the EFF; I even own packing tape with the Fourth Amendment printed on it that I use on my checked luggage when I fly. I believe that the so-called security that we see at the airport is nothing more than a waste of time, money, and energy for all involved. I like my civil liberties, and seeing them eroded sparks a letter-writing campaign to my representatives. Oh, yes, and I'm a geek. I cracked open this book fully expecting to love every single word on the page, expecting to identify with the characters and the story.

It took me until page 20 to realise that I hated it. The pages upon pages of useless exposition on everything from Mission-style burritos to a rather flawed discussion of network tunneling bog the book down. Worse, so does the propaganda that Marcus spews at every opportunity about liberty and freedom. I agree with pretty much all of the politics expressed herein, but reading it like this made me want to backhand Marcus and tell him to just move on already.

Even worse is the painfully simplistic storyline. For all that Marcus claims to be a hacker, he doesn't actually accomplish any hacks (and certainly not by coding). His single biggest hack is that he copies a particularly secure Linux distribution, burns CDs, and hands them out to people. If burning CDs makes one a hacker, then my mom just earned her 1337 merit badge. Burning CDs and blogging is apparently enough to bring down the DHS. Of course, the DHS here is portrayed as single-minded, one-dimensional, and singularly evil; and anyone who in the days after a terrorist attack is freaked out and thus supportive of additional security is also mindless and evil. So bringing down the DHS with an alternate Internet and poorly-written privacy rants on a blog isn't actually a big deal. My mom, hacker extraordinaire that she now apparently is, could've done it.

It's not that I disagree with any of the ideas put forth in this novel. For the most part, I strongly agree with them. It's that the package in which they are wrapped is poorly considered, poorly argued, and poorly written. The ideas herein are important and absolutely must be discussed, but the execution of those ideas is so heavyhanded as to make the book near-unreadable.

Hats off to Cory. This is a fascinating, thought-provoking book. Read it. Think about it (on all levels), share it with people you know and discuss it with them.

Although I disagree with 70-80% of this book's philosophy, sociology and technological suppositions, I think it is a wonderful and timely piece--well worth reading by pretty much everyone. The writing is suspenseful, accessible and thought provoking. There are some great historical anecdotes and an interesting look at how `movements' are started and maintained. I also think Cory did a commendable job in capturing adolescent thought processes, world-views and relationships. Although I have not read all of his work, this is by far the best I have read. I especially commend the way he portrays functional (if sometimes conflicted) parent child relationships and shows a loving, supportive family in a way most coming-of-age/teen rebellion books fail to do.

On the downside, many elements of the story are exaggerated and or poorly thought out. First, the social cost of creating anarchy in a modern city is greatly underplayed. The actions taken by the protagonist cause untold pain and suffering to tens of thousands of innocent people and are utterly reprehensible...the ends simply do not justify the means. Not a good role model. The role, motives, means and methods of police forces are greatly misrepresented as are the motives and critical thinking abilities of individuals who constitute police forces. And while less damaging, the abilities, talent and ultimate motivations of script-kiddies are exaggerated and greatly overplayed.

That said, Little Brother takes a hard, if somewhat exaggerated, look at current anti-terrorism laws and tactics, presenting a current societal dilemma in an engaging even engrossing novel. These topics are well worth thinking about, researching and discussing with people you respect and this book is a great introduction into the debate.

Because it is well done, timely and goes into depth on important social issues I give this a 5.

It's great to see Doctorow writing so well again after his last two somewhat disappointing novels. This is easily his best novel-length work since "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and it deserves all the praise it's received from other reviewers. Little Brother is the possible, perhaps likely, near-term future for the USA and the West in general if the sheep don't look up and start realising the "War on Terror" is more a war on democracy and their civil rights than something that will make them safe from terrorists. It's about being seen to be doing something rather than actually doing much of anything useful about the problem. It's about lining the pockets of multinational IT, security tech and private army corporations with rivers of public money rather than protecting the populace. It's about stopping dissent and democracy via an endless phoney "war" that no one is allowed to question. It's about the danger of sacrificing one's freedoms for the false promise of security.

This is a passionate YA novel about freedom and the right to live your life as you wish that everyone should read, even those over 25.

As with most teens on summer vacation, pleasure reading for me wasn't exactly priority numero uno. From digging through the piles of "recommended reading" from friends and family to "not-so-optional" reading from school, there wasn't much time for perusing the shelves for new releases and "me" books. Luckily for me, I managed to squeeze in "Little Brother" before Breaking Dawn came out and the summer-assignment-procrastination guilt started to kick in.
Let me tell you, it was worth my while.
Reminiscent of Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies" or "Midnighters" series, this book hooks you from page one and doesn't let you down. The copious technophile references and fast-paced banter of the main characters will make you forget about the friend requests piling up on your Facebook, and the plentiful action will tide you over until you can make it to the theater to see Hancock. It caters to today's ADD generation by speeding along and not bogging one down with bothersome morals or literary allusions. Another plus, it's tell-all descriptive without being stretched-out boring, which will satisfy Harry Potter fans (with a tech-head streak) and (the ever-elusive) book-ophobic teen guys.
Suggestion: before buying make sure you like the style. It's distinctively sci-fi and reads like a tech-blog, and if that's not your thing, don't bother. If you know you're into the genre, definitely go for it. You'll love every page.

Little Brother shows us a possible near-future in which San Francisco has been hit with a terrorist attack, and the aftermath in which the Department of Homeland Security cracks down on dissent and free-speech. It's topical, interesting, intelligent and gripping, even creepy at times.

The creepy part about this book is that everything is plausible. These things could actually happen in the near future, and at times are already happening now. This is a book that makes you think and question the world we are living in, about what we are doing and what we could become if another attack happened. It shows that technology can be used for good or ill, depending on the user, and that knowledge and intelligence are good things, tools with which to fight back at those who would take away our liberties.

Little Brother is a book for everybody, not just young adults, although they will probably best relate to the seventeen-year old protagonist. It's a book everybody should read and donate to their local school libraries and friends so that people everywhere can have the chance to read this book and understand that what is happening in the world today affects them, that there are things they can do to change it before the world gets as bad as it is in Little Brother.

I not only think that every teen should read it, but I think every parent should read it too. Then, the parents and the teens should sit down and discuss it. I have to tell you, a lot of what Doctorow talks about in this book is stuff we discussed when I was a teen in the Seventies. We were concerned that the FBI had files on individuals based on stupid things like magazine subscriptions or the political organizations one belonged to. We were worried about the invasion of our privacy and government stripping away our rights. We all read "1984" and knew what governmental intrusion could lead to. But, I think many of my generation forgot about those worries. Now, it's scarier the technology is there to keep us all under observation. We're so wired and everything is out there for just about anyone to grab. And, in the aftermath of 9/11, our rights really are being stripped from us.

Cory Doctorow's book is science fiction only in the way that "1984" is science fiction. It's a cautionary tale about what can happen if we turn a blind eye to government intrusion into our private lives and the tearing down of the Bill of Rights. The story is gripping and my heart was pounding and my throat was tight long after it was over. I had my almost-13 year old son read it before I did and he couldn't put it down. He wants to read more books like this, but after reading it, I realized that there probably aren't more books like this. It's seriously the most powerful book written since "To Kill a Mockingbird." It might be even more powerful.

I started reading this on a Friday and couldn't put it down until I'd finished it that weekend. It's a great read, and while it is geared towards the young adult crowd (mostly due to the voice of the main character, a 17-year old hacker) it still holds up as a serious piece of fiction. Especially for fans of hacking, crypto, spoofing, jamming, flashmobbing, LARPing, modding...

A great book!

Give it to all your friends, and all your friends' kids

I read Little Brother yesterday. It was so good I couldn't put it down. In the freely-available digital versions, Cory says that the enemy of artists (I'm paraphrasing) is obscurity. This was my first Doctorow novel, and I can say that he is no longer obscure in my house.

You can see plot summaries in other reviews, so I'm not going to rehash it. Although the police-state may be extreme, it's at least plausible. The tracking through RFID and data mining done with them is totally believable. Read this book. If it does nothing else, it will make you think. That's more than most other books.

However, I'm not entirely convinced it belongs in the young adult section. Just because the protagonist is 17 doesn't mean this is a YA book.

Just finished reading Cory Doctorow's amazing new science fiction novel "Little Brother," and it is an absolutely devastating critique of the Bush Administration's use of 9/11 to expand the surveillance state, a detailed handbook on civil liberties and technology, and a can't-put-it-down story that will have you reading way past your bedtime. This is ostensibly a young adult book, but don't be put off -- like the best of Robert Heinlein's juveniles, Doctorow writes a sophisticated tale that never talks down to the reader and which is just as enjoyable and engaging for adults. The hero just happens to be a high school kid.

A 17-year-old hacker named Marcus Yallow (or W1n5t0n, his online identity) and his friends are caught up in a DHS dragnet following a terrorist attack in San Francisco. Shocked and angered by a government response that seems both cruelly cynical and hopelessly inept, Marcus and his friends respond by creating an online-driven counterculture. Along the way, Marcus has to deal with both the challenges of being a teenager (like standing up for the Bill of Rights in social studies class) and staying paranoid enough to remain free.

It's a feast for geeks: you'll learn about ARGs, encryption, RFIDs, gait recognition, and (my favorite) hacking DNS to distribute video. It's a primer on civil liberties, with deep texture and nuanced debate worthy of a lawyer from the EFF or ACLU. But it's also embedded in a gripping, edge-of-your-seat narrative that will literally have you finishing the book in a sitting. (Okay, it took me a week, but it was a busy week at work, so I was reading when I could on my iPhone.)

Oh yeah. It's free. As in speech, but also as in beer. You can pop over to Doctorow's site and download it in any of a dozen (all DRM-free) formats. Like all Doctorow's work, it's Creative Commons licensed. But don't let that fool you. The hardcover is published by Tor Books, arguably sf's most prestigious imprint. The dead tree version is well worth the money for maximum browsability, and you can grab it right here on Amazon.

I liked this book, and everything it stands for. I bought it even though I had read it elsewhere. I had to have my own copy so I could help inform my loved ones that ALL of this and more can happen in the near future, if not today. Cory Doctorow and Tor have a new fan.

Cory Doctrow does an excellent job or creating a real character. Having worked in the public school system, i hated when marcus walked out the room with his hands raised in triumph for having been called to the office. It was a stupid high school thing to do. Which what makes the character so compelling. He is niether the smartest nor toughest character in the book. Hes simply the most passionet.
One beef i have with the book is how it blankets ever one who isn't 100% in agreement with the character as one 'them'. The book is a fairly open statement the Bush presidency has been a mess. It takes the stance that The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was designed to traple out civil liberties. And that anyone who disagrees is the enemy. Never trust anyone over 25. Well, i'm 28. I happen to be a conservative christian. And I think the Bush years have been a disaster. (mostly because 'No Child Left Behind' is a total failure, only succeding in making public education worse.) So how do I get lumped into 'them'.
Anyone willing to trade freedom for security deserves and will recieve neither.

Informative, fun, and pretty much the most important book to come out for young adults in the past decade. Every teenager in America should read this. Kids need to know that they aren't helpless to change the awful world that the Baby Boomers are leaving us, and they don't have to wait till they're adults to take part in it. This book is a rallying cry, and will motivate every kid who reads it to educate themselves enough to become Little Brothers.

People are a lot more socially active when they think that they can actually make a difference. This book gives kids that hope.

This is a compelling and chilling story of how liberty can be so easily lost, and how it is up to all of us to ensure that we never allow it to be taken away.

A very exciting story, that is all to believable.

Little Brother is a fantastic book. I bought it for my daughter after reading it online at Cory Doctorow's site, mainly because I feel it can serve as a teen primer to the kinds of political issues which are dominating our American society right now. Privacy, terrorism, freedom: these are issues we face right now, and my viewpoint is the same as Ben Franklin's - those who are willing to give up liberty for security deserve neither. The writing is clear and easy-going, and I couldn't put it down. If you are concerned about the direction our country is headed, this is a great book to give to teens to help them understand why reading the news can make you so grumpy.

I have a rule for myself. I only read new books on the treadmill. Keeping to this rule has made it so that I get an hour (sometimes more) on the treadmill every day. Well, I got so involved in this book I couldn't stop reading. Before I knew it, the room swayed and my treadmill stopped. Apparently the time stops at 100 minutes which made the treadmill stop in midstride for me, so disorienting.

Well, I ended up clocking in almost three hours the first day and dreamed about Marcus, Darryl and the Bay Bridge that night.

I was sore and a little stiff the next day, but I had to find out what happened. Did they get caught? Would DHS ever leave the city?

Truly, this was one of the best books I have read, well worth the muscle fatigue!

I highly recommend it.

This book should be required reading for any technologically inclined teenager. And just about everyone else, for that matter. It not only presents a chillingly believable near future where our government has continued to exploit and expand our fears to reduce our civil liberties much further, but it restores the good name "hackers" had originally, before those same forces presented all hackers as vandals at best or criminals at worst. The fact is that most hackers are just kids who enjoy the challenge of beating the technology, and they serve a very useful purpose in finding holes in that technology. Very, very few are trying to steal, or to deface web sites. But the ones that do get all the press. In a society where technology is increasingly used to invade our privacy and deprive us of our remaining civil liberties, hackers are one of our last hopes. As Cory Doctorow says better than I. Read it.

A book with important information for anyone to know, but unfortunately intertwined with a flawed story.. Perhaps being local to the bay area, i could catch these flaws easier than most. That being said, they're not that big a deal, but the path of our protagonist seems to be laid out in a way that he is able to get out of trouble as easy as he gets into it. Still a great book and should be on every young adult's required reading list. Good luck getting this one on the recommended reading list at schools tho. I am also a full-blown adult so i am not the target reader.

Fightback by the Bay.


A deliberate Orwellian title, for a deliberate Orwellian scenario. A supposed terrorist attack in San Francisco leads the US Department of Homeland Security - a title George himself could easily have thought up - into serious overreaction.

Kidnapping and torture of children, massive staff increases, random no reason searches of people taking a different train than they used to, that sort of crazy thing.

A novel about a tech-hip angry teenager, and his friends and family, as he puts it on the line to do something about the fascists in charge who are way worse than any terrorist goes.

Saw some people say that this is Doctorow's best novel, and they'd probably be right. This sort of hip nearish future tech and political exploration certainly would seem to be his forte, that and the short story.

I think I saw Nancy Kress say on her blog that she didn't quite buy it, as her government might not go that far. I think that is part of the author's point, so that they won't. Especially for somewhere that is indulging in anti-Constitutional prevention is worse than the crime antics currently, with such a prison-as-growth-industry area. There there are the illegal phonetaps, and Echelon/Carnivore and all that fun stuff reading all your email.

So while they may not be carting off 14 year old whiteboy hackers and waterboarding them, how about the brownboys or girls? An issue the author brings up. Some of the abuses being talked about do happen already, so clearly some cautionary tale-telling at work.

Not to mention detaining an Australian for several years in just such a place as one of those Doctorow mentions.

Presumably the actual terrorists are sitting around laughing their arses off at all the wastes of money.

Some interesting other bits - Doctorow puts in little plugs for his favorite bookshops before each chapter, but he manages to write it in a way that doesn't sound like shilling.

There's an afterword by an actual security expert who deals with things like the security technology on display in the book that Marcus, the protagonist and friends are involved with.

A fine work, with some notes on further reading to go along.

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 think the boingboing website is fun. I was a little annoyed how much the webmaster used it to promote his novel, but I guess it worked, because I went over to read the free version online.

Quite frankly, the author writes at the level of a not particularly talented amateur. The novel is written in the first person, but the character constantly talks in stocatto one-sentence paragraphs, is constantly glib and annoying, constantly sounds like the mouthpiece of a 35 year old who views free source as a *cause* rather than an real person, constantly uses slangs not appropriate to a young San Franciscan, and basically is not for a second believable or interesting or anything but annoying.

For that matter, none of the characters are interesting, the plot isn't interesting, the near-future universe isn't believable, and it's all about as self-righteous as a novel can get. I guess this is written as a kid's book, with the idea that being a little more didactic is OK. But even for children, I think this book is too extreme - and are children really going to identify with a kid who is basically the mouthpiece of some long-winded adult who loves diving into tangents about historic freedoms? I think the target audience is adults who are full of themselves? Perhaps their teenage nephews are given this book as a gift.

At the least, download the novel first, because most people won't want to keep reading past page five.

"Little Brother" is a curious mix of YA thriller and instructional book; Doctorow notes in the beginning that "this book is meant to be something you do, not just something you read" - the various techniques protagonist Marcus Yallow uses to evade surveillance and capture in the book are explained in detail. That's a lot of info dumping, but it's handled very well; partly because it's worked into the pacing, but it could easily have overwhelmed the book if handled poorly. The explanations are by and large succinct and effective.

The instructions themselves are primarily the tools Marcus uses to evade and frustrate the surveillance of the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on San Francisco. The DHS is an kept an ever-present but distant opponent for much of the book - after the introduction and initial incarceration, the direct opposition is proxies and the tools of surveillance themselves, rather than the agents of DHS themselves. This keeps the level of paranoid thriller up while keeping the slightly flimsy characterization of some of the enemies from undermining the book. Marcus himself is definitely a precocious teenager, but not an unconvincing one.

It's always tricky to review YA books, as the book essentially isn't written for me, and the exposition is heavy; but "Little Brother" is a fast moving, excellent little book that also gives some interesting ideas for using technology for privacy.

Cory is pretty stark about his vision for the future. The book is marketed at "Young Adults," but he doesn't hold anything back. The frank brutality caught me by surprise and at some points, I did wonder how appropriate it was for young adult readers.

A moment's consideration will show such a worry is silly. Any "objectionable content" in Little Brother is already pervasive in our culture and visible to nearly all ages (especially teens); the main difference is that Cory uses this content constructively to inform and, hopefully, inspire. Along these lines, I hope people recognize that Cory did not write Little Brother as a literary masterpiece to be analyzed for its stylistic devices.

Rather, recognize Little Brother for what it is: a well timed book that will hopefully jumpstart but a few readers to become informed and cognizant of their power and the capabilities of technology.

Another major point of the book concerned the fact that teenagers are underestimated. The reviewer who found Marcus' intelligent responses unlikely falls into this misconception. It's highly likely that a high school student has read the Declaration of Independence and that the student could find it and read it aloud to a class. It's highly likely that said student would be able to later recite text, if he found it important enough.

But even if the dialogue and arguments seem improbable, coming from a seventeen-year-old student, the dialogue was obviously engineered to provide readers with reasoning against common claims concerning security and right to privacy. It arms readers to speak out against other common misconceptions like "If you've done nothing to wrong, you don't have anything to hide." Furthermore, Cory takes the time to really explain the technology and the theory behind what happens in the book. While these explanations may be perceived as slow downs, breaks in the plot, or boring, they are far from it. Cory makes knowledge cool, highly applicable, and attainable. Again, this is meant to be more than your average YA thriller.

As a seventeen-year-old student, just done with her first year in college, I'm extremely glad Cory wrote this book. I've always loved technology and I've taught myself a lot, but Little Brother has opened up so much more. I'm thinking about changing my major, and career, basically because of this book.

Little Brother is a recommended read for anyone, but especially for teens. Give it to every teen you know, and show them how to find more information online. Not everyone will `get it', but it will make a huge difference in some lives and that's enough.

This book is a great story... exciting and well written.. its also interspersed with some very advanced technology and security concepts.. made easy to understand and follow.

I'd give it five stars for just that reason.

I read the free copy, and have recommended it to about... 10 people or so, and I plan to do so even more often.

I worked in computer security for years, and what I saw there was upsetting and sad, which is why I left. Computer security was being turned from a way to prevent terrorists and criminals from doing what they do, and into a way to prevent people from having freedom and privacy.

Computer security was used as a way to prevent layoffs, by systematically finding little policy violations, often going years back, and using those as grounds to fire.

Vendors who sell security software often liked to quote that 80% of attacks came from inside the company... those for profit entities really sell fear, uncertainty, and doubt... extrapolate that to a near future in which 80% of attacks are said to come from inside the country, and I think you'll see that this slippery slope leads somewhere awful indeed.

This books not just good, its important. I hope it strikes a debate. I hope young folks do read it... because its just that important.

California Uber Alles? LOL WUT?

In this "book" there is a terrorist attack in San Francisco and the government turns into a police state. Now, it doesn't take a liberal arts degree to realize that they're making a comparison to the attacks on 9/11. Ironically, unless Barrack Obama gets into office, America has no need to fear a police state. That doesn't stop leftist author Cory Doctorow from exploiting a horrible attack on American soil in which thousands died.

Tell me Moar!

After the terrorist attacks, the protagonist and his family are taken in custody by, get this, the Department of Homeland Security, for questioning. To make matters worse, the book legitimizes computer hackers as the `hero' of this book hacks into the American Government system to enact revenge on the `system.' Yes, the leftist author of this book encourages treasonous activity via cyber terrorism.

So I heard you liek Mudkipz...

Leftist author, Doctorow, also has no right to capitalize off of computer hackers either. He's no hacker, and if he is, not only is he a criminal, but he has broken a sacred trust within the hacker community. He may have done just that as much of the books mentions real hacker tools. By doing this he is educating children on how to break the law, encouraging them to break the law when doing so is justified in their own minds, and using fear tactics to persuade children to become leftists like him.

Do a barrelroll!

Much of the dialogue in this book is coarse, vulgar, and contains profanity. Seriously who puts profanity in a children's book? That's sick. However, while it is true that this is a children's book, it will most likely be read by only adult leftists, even if they have a little trouble with the `big words.'

Long review is long

So, just how many topics does leftist author Doctorow exploit in one novel just to make a buck? Terrorism, the 9/11 attacks, computer hackers, The Dead Kennedys, America, himself, and his readers. This book clearly promotes cyber terrorism against the government by children and all those who support it are guilty by association.

Can I reserve Battletoads for the wii?

Just to let you know, Cory, computer hackers aren't reading your garbage book, they're currently battling the evil forces of $cientology. Do not buy this book for your children, if you do you are in fact supporting the criminal activity of cyber-terrorism.

Really, this is a timely one. Our culture is trying to decide how to react to what scares us, and the conundrum is that we become less free in the name of protecting freedom. Just as technology has the power to create a security state, it also can be implemented in a different way, which respects the fundamental liberties of humans.

I realized a while back I had only written reviews to complain about shoddy manufacturing, and vowed to write a positive one on the first thing I got from Amazon that rocked enough, and that was this book. Check it out.

While the subject matter is certainly worthwhile and the points being made are valid, "Little Brother" is a leaden, hamhanded attempt at topical relevance. Heck, even the name is a thudding turn on George Orwell's Big Brother. That's a shame because the first part of the book builds a good head of steam and anticipation, then it descends into a slog of techno-babble that only those who've drunk the Kool-Aid will understand. One-note preaching on the badness of the bad guys and the indefensibility of the government's tactics rises to fever pitch that's heavyhanded and dull. Eventually, the book turns into a textbook on how to use technology as a form of peaceful insurrection. Good things to know. Maybe Doctorow is being so blatantly obvious in order to reach teenagers, but jeez, does he think teenagers are so dumb they need to be whacked by a 2x4? With all the pontificating and preaching and techno-jargon, the pace of "Little Brother" slows to a crawl and interest flags. By the last third of this book, who cares what happens?

High school is a bit of a drag, but Marcus manages to get through it--thanks to the great games he plays, and his proclivity for computer hacking. Living in San Francisco, he's learned the way the game is played, and he's willing to face down the Vice Principal who would really love to have him expelled. But when terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge (and the Bart tunnel underneath it), everything changes. Marcus is picked up by a Department of Homeland Security team and, when he uses the same sass on them that he uses on his teachers, he's thrown into a mini-Guantanamo Bay prison camp. When he's freed, days later, Marcus is angry and radicalized, but finds that his normally understanding father has gone over to the other side, willing to accept restrictions in personal freedom that he would never have agreed to before the bombing.

Before DHS set Marcus free, they warned him that they'd be watching and that next time they gather him up, he won't be let go. Considering that one of his friends never was set free from the secret prison camp, Marcus can easily believe their threats. Technology, though, cuts both ways. Although the DHS can use it to monitor activities, to search for suspicious behavior, to track communications, it can also be used to hide secrets--and can be manipulated to overwhelm the human resources who must follow up with the discrepancies technology detects. Using an X-Box hack, Marcus creates a tunnel network in the internet that allows hops from X-Box to X-Box, accessing the Internet through multiple and changing patterns. He then works with a friend to convert San Francisco's music download system to support full encryption, allowing the encrypted traffic among the rebellious youth to hide in the far vaster traffic of music downloads.

Although Marcus is radicalized, his friends are frightened by the constant threat that the DHS, working with the local police, impose. His activities do bring him a new girlfriend, though, which, considering that Marcus (at 17) has only kissed three girls, is a positive step. Still, no matter how much technology Marcus can hack, no matter how clever he is in developing devices that detect hidden cameras, man-in-the-middle attacks, and phishing, the government has far more resources. Sooner or later, he knows he'll be caught.

Author Cory Doctorow asks critical questions about our national response to terrorist attacks. If beating the terrorists requires giving up the freedoms that the terrorists object to, can we really say that we've beaten them? If terrorism is a horrible, but ultimately minor threat (more people are struck by lightning in the US than attacked by terrorists), is it really worth subverting our entire economy and political system to fight it? And to what extent should ordinary people be inconvenienced by techniques that make the government look like it's doing something, but that don't actually reduce the chances of a terrorist attack (taking off shoes in airports, silly color-coding alerts).

Doctorow doesn't spend a lot of time really addressing nuances. The DHS in this story is bad--ultimately using torture at home, and turning inconvenient (but not necessarily guilty) people over to foreign governments for more torture and eventual disposal. I would have found the story more interesting if Doctorow had constructed a less extreme straw man. Unfortunately, a lot of his portrayals turn out to be accurate pictures of what Americans actually have done to one another--in the name of fighting terrorism.

For me, the story is strongest when Matthew is creating new hacks, new techniques to defeat the DHS's 'big brother' schemes to keep a watch on everyone in San Francisco--in the hopes of heading off another terrorist attack. The discussions of the X-Box hack, of public key encryption, of Yippie-style street-theater protests, Matthew's hidden-camera finder, and the RFID switchers, all make good reading and are plausible as approaches that protestors could use to make infringement of liberties more difficult. Of course, setting the story in San Francisco makes the protest atmosphere as well as the high-tech leaning of the story convincing.

Doctorow and Tor are positioning LITTLE BROTHER as a young adult story. Certainly Matthew is both a teen and highly capable--which will be attractive to the young adult market. Likewise, the idealistic freedom-loving element of the story, and the pranks Matthew and his friends play fit with that young adult group. Overall, though, the themes of the story, the issues being dealt with, and the social commentary span all ages.

Apparently, Doctorow wrote this book in 8 weeks from start to finish! It was compelling--we couldn't put it down. It's not without some minor flaws, but if you're looking for a fast-paced, thoroughly enjoyable read, this book is for you. Would be wonderful to teach to a high-school English class!

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.

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

Little Brother starts off well, describing a near future world where online gaming overlaps into the real world, with the young computer-hacker hero using his skillz to outwit his teachers and other authorities. But it takes a shocking turn into ugly, sickening terror when he and his friends are unfairly targeted by Homeland Security in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. This is the big weakness of the book, that the HS agents are depicted as evil, one-dimensional thugs, seemingly interested only in mistreating and even torturing their captives even after it is clear that they have no relevant or helpful information.

We next see society deteriorating into a totalitarian despotism, with all movements monitored, and citizens pulled over for questioning merely because their driving patterns depart from normal. All this in a U.S. city only a few years in the future!

No doubt this is author Doctorow's interpretation of the American response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as government prisons such as Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He is entitled to his views on these matters, but when he turns them into vivid story lines as in this book, the results are just not credible and require (among other lapses) painting government agents as pure villains motivated only by their evil hearts.

The story is further hampered by the 17 year old protagonist mouthing speeches that would sound more natural coming from the 35 year old author than a high school boy, quoting extensively from the Declaration of Independence and seemingly armed with a wide knowledge of books discussing liberty and freedom.

Once we get past the first few pages, any sense of fun and excitement is lost, replaced throughout the rest of the story by a pervasive miasma of fear and horror that underlies all the action and ultimately detracts from the story. In the end I can't recommend this book for its target audience of teens. It is too polemical and works too hard in deadly seriousness to sell the notion that our national government is pure evil. In the end, Doctorow's political views overwhelm and kill the germ of an exciting story that he started with.

Cory has walked the fine line of telling a technical tale to a mixed audience while keeping the story from losing too many people. There are sections where the book might appear to get a little too technical for some, or a little too watered down for others, depending upon the reader. Overall Cory has leaned slightly towards keeping the technology level low to keep the story from losing its pace. Which is good, since this isn't one of those books you will never finish. But on the other hand, his core readership could have used a little more technical wizardry.

It is clear that Cory has evolved his own style of writing that is different and somehow "current". You don't read Cory for the prose, but to read about stuff that few can write a novel length book on. To discover enjoyable youth lingo is a bonus. It is also clear that these are early days in Cory's literary career, and we can expect better stuff in days to come.

There are moments in the book that seemed familiar - like the scene where Marcus confronts Mrs Andersen reminded me of Harry Potter confronting Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In an otherwise original book, it made me wince a bit. Thankfully this was a brief scene.

Cory doesn't talk about the tracking threat of cell phones until much later in the book. For someone as paranoid as Marcus, worried about infrared cams spying on the get together of his web of trust inductees, letting them each carry a cell phone to the meeting and snap pictures is well, hard to believe. On the other hand, he is a 17 year old acting on instinct, and perhaps asking teenagers to leave their cell phones behind is well, impossible.

I enjoyed this book so much that I'm buying a hardcopy having already read it. I may not be trustworty since I'm "over 25", but I think this book deals with a lot of important concepts in a very approachable way. It'll be a gift to my soon to be 14 year old...

This book should be required reading for all Americans. If only to spark more lively debates about the nature of government and the implicit responsibilities of citizens.

Like many others, I could not put this book down once I started. This book reminded me a lot of V for Vendetta which is one of my all time favorite movies.

I enjoyed the book for the most part. It features a clever plot and fairly engaging characters. I also appreciate Cory licensing this under CC.

Nonetheless, I was somewhat disappointed. The bad guys are one-dimensional caricatures, and even some of the characters who experience reversals along the way just shift from one extreme to another. Neither are the good guys immune to engaging in awkward, expository debate as the cliches bounce back and forth. These contrivances may be aimed at a different audience, but I found myself somewhat annoyed. And I realize it's a nit-pick, but it's also puts me off to see kids supposedly derived from California using words like "piccies" and ducking into the "toilet."

Overall, a fun read, but I honestly just couldn't get into it the way I had hoped.

"There's something really liberating about having some corner of your life that's yours, that no one gets to see except you. It's a little like nudity or taking a dump. Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There's nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them. But what if I decreed that from now on, every time you went to evacuate some solid waste, you'd have to do it in a glass room perched in the middle of Times Square, and you'd be buck naked?
"Even if you've got nothing wrong or weird with your body -- and how many of us can say that? -- you'd have to be pretty strange to like that idea. Most of us would run screaming. Most of us would hold it in until we exploded.
"It's not about doing something shameful. It's about doing something private. It's about your life belonging to you.
"They were taking that from me, piece by piece. As I walked back to my cell, that feeling of deserving it came back to me. I'd broken a lot of rules all my life and I'd gotten away with it, by and large. Maybe this was justice. Maybe this was my past coming back to me. After all, I had been where I was because I'd snuck out of school."

San Francisco techno-geek teen Marcus Yallow (aka "w1n5t0n") and his three friends find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Having all snuck out of their respective schools to get a head start on tracking down the latest clue in their favorite Alternative Reality Game -- Harajuku Fun Madness -- for which they are teammates, they are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security in the immediate aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, transported to a secret prison, and kept in isolation:

"'Am I under arrest?'
"'You're going to have to be more cooperative, Marcus, starting right now.' She didn't say, 'or else,' but it was implied.
"'I would like to contact an attorney,' I said. 'I would like to know what I've been charged with. I'd like to see some form of identification from both of you.'
"The two agents exchanged looks.
"I think you should really reconsider your approach to this situation,' severe haircut lady said. 'I think you should do that right now. We found a number of suspicious devices on your person. We found you and your confederates near the site of the worst terrorist attack this country has ever seen. Put those two facts together and things don't look very good for you, Marcus. You can cooperate, or you can be very, very sorry. Now what is this for?'
"'You think I'm a terrorist? I'm seventeen years old!'
"'Just the right age -- Al Qaeda loves recruiting impressionable, idealistic kids. We googled you, you know. You've posted a lot of very ugly stuff on the public Internet.
"'I would like to speak to an attorney,' I said.
"Severe haircut lady looked at me like I was a bug. 'You're under the mistaken impression that you've been picked up by the police for a crime. You need to get past that. You are being detained as a potential enemy combatant by the government of the United States. If I were you. I'd be thinking very hard about how to convince us that you are not an enemy combatant. Very hard. Because there are dark holes that enemy combatants can disappear into, very deep dark holes, holes where you can just vanish. Forever. Are you listening to me young man? I want you to unlock this phone and then decrypt the files in its memory. I want you to account for yourself: why were you out on the street? What do you know about the attack on this city?'
"'I'm not going to unlock my phone for you,' I said, indignant. My phone's memory has all kinds of private stuff on it: photos, emails, little hacks and mods I'd installed. 'That's private stuff.'
"'What have you got to hide?'
"'I've got the right to my privacy,' I said. 'And I want to speak to an attorney.'
"'This is your last chance, kid. Honest people don't have anything to hide.'
"'I want to speak to an attorney.' My parents would pay for it. All the FAQs on getting arrested were clear on this point. Just keep asking to see an attorney, no matter what they say or do. There's no good that comes of talking to the cops without your lawyer present. Those two said they weren't cops, but if this wasn't an arrest, what was it?
"In hindsight, maybe I should have unlocked my phone for them."

Marcus is eventually released, but it is made quite clear to him that he will be picked up and will disappear for good if he says a word to anyone at all about where he has been or what he has been through. Marcus -- who has paid attention during his American government classes -- decides that the Bill of Rights should not be optional and that he must use his techno-talents to anonymously mobilize his fellow teenagers in order to take on the out-of-control U.S. government.

LITTLE BROTHER is an incredibly smart, unbelievably tense thriller. While reading its 365 pages, there was not a single instance when I knew what was going to happen next.

What is most scary about the story is that it is set in the very-near future and that so many of the tech tools, hacks, and mods that Marcus Yallow utilizes or decries are for real. (I googled many of them and, sure enough, there they were!) If you are not familiar with author Cory Doctorow, he has long been involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is an editor at BoingBoing. This guy knows technology and related privacy issues like nobody's business.

Given the unrelenting power of this story and considering that we are at a time in our history when our elected representatives are debating the right of the President to circumvent the requirements of obtaining a court order in order to spy on large numbers of American citizens -- aka ME and YOU -- this is surely going to be one of the ultimate must have/must read teen books of 2008.

"Don't trust anyone over thirty." -- Jerry Rubin

Back in 1971, my adolescent sensibilities were rocked off of their foundations by my exposure to PICTURES AT A PROSECUTION: DRAWINGS AND TEXTS FROM THE CHICAGO CONSPIRACY TRIAL by Jules Feiffer. You can bet your Xbox that there are going to be teens today who will grow up and think back to the moment when someone hooked them up with Cory Doctorow's ground-breaking LITTLE BROTHER.

"Little Brother" takes Orwell's "1984", and updates it ala Stephenson's "Cryptomomicon", while taking me back to the young adult stories I remember and loved like "The Three Investigators".

The near-future plot revolves around a group of high school students and the massive security and civil liberties crackdown that lands on San Francisco after a new "9/11" style attack occurs there. It begins with the teens being mistakenly held for military-style interrogation by the DHS, and does a good job (at a YA appropriate level - explicit, but not violently graphic) of describing the mind manipulation and power games that can be played in these situations.

When they're freed, they discover that the Department of Homeland Security has used the event as an excuse for a massive surveillance crackdown in the Bay area, and they chronicle the resultant affect on civil liberties and free speech. Then they fight back, with all the powers next-gen l33t hacker kids can muster.

It's fun, insightful, timely, and it's Doctorow's best work yet. It's sold as "Young Adult" fiction, so don't look in the SF section, but it's well worth reading by everyone.

Scott Westerfeld gives Doctorow's latest novel a blurb of "A rousing tales of techno-geek rebellion."

I was kindly given an Advance Reader's Copy by the unparalleled force known as Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and now in return, its time for me to talk about the novel.

Doctorow is more known these days for his often controversial and definitely iconcolastic positions on matters technological. Editor at Boing Boing, crusader against the excesses of Digital Rights Management...Doctorow definitely doesn't keep his head down.

I haven't actually read any novel-length fiction of his until now, and I am glad that I did, even if I am not the intended demographic of the novel.

Little Brother is set around 2010, in a US which has had a Republican return to the White House in the 2008 elections. The story centers around Marcus Yallow, whose original screenname of w1inst0n and the title of the book gave me immediate "spidey senses" of where this novel was going. We get a primer on Marcus' carefree life, and a lot of infodumping on technology--enough that the novel felt a bit like a throwback to SF novels of yore which would do the "as you know, bob" approach to science fiction.

Marcus' SF becomes the target of a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11, and as he and his friends are cutting school as part of an alternate reality game, they are caught in the DHS dragnet. His anarchic and rebellious attitude do him no good, and he spends a short period in a "Gitmo by the Bay".

Once released (and tellingly, one of his friends is *not*), Marcus becomes even more radicalized by the experience, enough that he is willing to challenge the DHS when San Francisco is put into a lockdown that would be the wet masturbatory dream of authoritarians everywhere.

And therein lies the tale.

Little Brother is written in first person, and so we get everything filtered through Marcus' perceptions, prejudices, attitudes and experience. While I suspect that Marcus' opinions may be very close to Doctorow's (although that's not guaranteed; I wouldn't make the assumption that authorial voice always equals protagonist voice), my meta-knowledge of Doctorow suggests that Marcus' radicalization and voice came very naturally to the author.

Too, aside from the infodumps which slow down the book here and there, the novel sounds like a YA novel. The teenage protagonists sounded, to my ear, like teenagers. They are real characters in a near future world that readers in the same age group can identify with.

I think Doctorow softpedals the confrontations between the teenagers and the security forces a little bit, having them result in mostly non violent confrontations. I suppose Doctorow did load the dice a little bit--a couple of shooting deaths at the hands of the DHS would have destroyed Marcus' movement, and would have turned the book into a parallel, rather than a counterpoint, to 1984. This book doesn't end completely happily...but Marcus makes a difference.

It's a very good book, whatever you think of its politics and opinions, and it fits well as a gateway book. This is the sort of YA science fiction that could, and should, and must bring new readers into the graying genre of SF. And for the rest of us, too, its an indictment of the dangers of security theater, and security which does not make us any safer.

I enjoyed it and commend it to the rest of you.

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.

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.