Little Brother - A Review

 

Cory Doctorow is hailed as an intellectual, challenging the corporations who chip away at people's rights to own the media and electronics they buy. But he's also quite the fiction writer. Case in point is his 2008 masterpiece, "Little Brother," which may be the best "man in hole" plot I've ever come across.

In a classic opening, Marcus Yallow and his teenage hacker friends find themselves on the wrong side of school administration. In Marcus' case, just one more unexcused absence will result in expulsion. Yet he finds himself playing hooky anyway because he and his friends can't resist an alternate reality game that uses cell tower signals in the San Francisco Bay area as targets. They have a run-in with a rival team from a different school who are also playing the same game. And then...

The Golden Gate Bridge explodes.

It quickly becomes apparent that this is another 9/11 type attack, and the public loses its collective shit. Marcus and his friends try to get out of the danger zone as people begin panicking, when a friend of theirs gets badly knifed by a random looter. Realizing that their friend might die, they flag down what looks like a passing car.

Only it isn't a car. It's a military vehicle. Dark-clad soldiers jump out, grab Marcus and his friends, throw them into a truck and drive them away.

They are taken to some unknown facility, where they are questioned. It looks very bad. They were found out on the streets during school hours with cyber-hacking equipment. They are suspected of being Al-Quaeda sympathizers. Perhaps even the ones who set off the explosives that blew up the bridge. Marcus and his friends try to explain that it was only a game, but their interrogators don't believe them.

They are mistreated. Even tortured. Especially Marcus, the "ringleader" of their cyber-team.

When Marcus is eventually released a week later, he is a changed kid, broken and defeated. He discovers his entire world has changed, too. His laptop has been bugged. His teachers at school have gone ultra right-wing. Even his father has become an anti-terrorism extremist. Darryl, the friend of his that got knifed, is still missing. Possibly dead.

And all around him, the Bay City descends into a police state.

Until, that is, he finds a way to fight back using a paranoid-Linux X-box.

In many ways, "Little Brother" is a modernization of George Orwell's 1984. Like Orwell's masterpiece, the characters of "Little Brother" find themselves living under an oppressive government which monitors its populace with super-surveillance. (And it shouldn't escape anyone's attention that the title "Little Brother" is a nod to Orwell's character, "Big Brother.") In an afterword at the end of the book, reference is even made to 1984 by a guest writer. But there are key differences which I can't tell you about for fear of spoiling the ending.

Cory's books and audio books are kept off of Amazon and Audible because he refuses to bow to the corporate gods who wish to sell something which must be maintained with a continuous subscription. "If you have to pay to unlock something you paid for, you don't really own it," he says. And he's damned well right. He could be endorsed as one of this generation's best writers - if he only played ball with the corporate giants. But he won't play their game. He feels YOU deserve to actually own the product he sells. So, you must go to his website to buy his work directly. He knows perfectly well that this hurts his bottom line. He knows that this denies himself market share and exposure.

But if you do go to his website, craphound.com, and buy his products, he makes damned sure it's worth it! You'll get the best bang for your buck.

And in the case of "Little Brother," that's literally true.

Eric

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