Summary: Seventeen-year-old Markus and three of his friends are cutting school when terrorists blow up the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Caught out on the streets, they're picked up by the Department of Homeland Security, and detained and questioned for days under suspicion of being involved in the attack. When Markus is finally released, he finds his city on lock-down, with the DHS having ramped up surveillance in every sphere of daily life. But Markus isn't willing to let the government strip away his freedom without a fight, and he eventually becomes the figurehead for a new counterculture rebellion. But this rebellion makes him a marked man, and anyways, how can one kid possibly hope to take down the government-funded monolith of the DHS?

Review: This book terrified me. Admittedly, I don't read a lot of horror novels, so I don't have a huge basis for comparison, but this book is easily the most terrifying thing I've read in years. And what's terrifying isn't a bunch of supernatural ghosties and goblins... just about everything in this book is either real, or completely plausibly almost real - and that's what scares the crap out of me.

The title, of course, is a reference to Orwell's 1984, and therefore this book tends to get classed with other dystopian novels - i.e. as science fiction. The thing is, though, that calling this book science fiction is a misnomer. Almost all of the technology that Doctorow describes already exists; the surveillance systems he describes as being taken over by DHS are already in place, invading our privacy in a million subtle ways every day. Little Brother is technically speculative fiction, but the scary thing is that it doesn't have to speculate very far: its world could easily be our world tomorrow... literally, tomorrow. That's not dystopian, that's just... topian. And that makes it one important read. Regardless of your politics, regardless of your views on issues of privacy and free speech and terrorism and national security and personal liberty, Little Brother highlights the knife edge on which our society is walking, and the terrible ways in which it can go wrong.

The thing is, although this book is terrifying and important, and although it wears its politics on its sleeve and very clearly has A Message, it's still a really, really good read. The style might not be to everyone's taste; there are frequent mini-lectures about security, or encryption, or the history of the counterculture movement, or LARPing, or computer programing, or whatever. That may sound deathly boring to you - I certainly would have thought so before I read this book - but the thing is, Doctorow writes them so well, and they're all so immediately relevant to the plot, that they wind up completely fascinating, even for non-techno-geeks like me. (With the exception of one digression that involved a lot of IP addresses that poor Kirby Heyborne still had to read out loud for the audiobook.)

The technobabble and the terrorism plots aren't all there is to this book, either. Marcus is a thoroughly believable teenaged boy, and Doctorow's also really good at capturing the realities of being seventeen. Little Brother is as effective of a coming-of-age story as it is a technogeek-rebellion-political-commentary, and where it really wins is by so effortlessly merging the two together. So, to sum up: the narrator's sympathetic, the story is fascinating, the writing is engaging, you learn some cool things along the way, it makes you think critically about the world around you, and the issues it raises are of crucial importance to modern society. Why aren't you reading this book already? 5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Read it. Even if you don't like sci-fi, or avoid young adult novels on principle, this one is worth your time. I may be older than twenty-five, but trust me... at least on this. ( )

Terrorists have killed thousands in attacks on San Francisco and Homeland Security will stop at nothing to prevent further attacks. Everyone's movements are scrutinized, habeus corpus is suspended, and a small band of video game players find ways to confound Homeland Security's attempts to invade everyone's privacy. This only makes them targets for Homeland Security who seems to have forgotten the freedoms they should be trying to protect. A rollicking good tale of cybergeeks turned hackers that includes a history of cryptography, civil liberties groups and American counterculture, and Internet safety.

Seventeen year old Marcus and his friends witness a terrorist bombing in San Francisco, and get arrested as suspects by the Department of Homeland Security. On his release, Marcus is terrified but resolved to help his friends. A deft hacker, he sets up an underground resistance movement online, ultimately becoming a hero in the fight for freedoms he had taken for granted all his young life. This quick-paced work of fiction is geared to younger teens, but also a fun introduction to the technology of security and the privacy issues at stake.

Read the rest ... http://johnmiedema.ca/2009/06/07/supp...

To me, Little Brother read like an introduction to cryptography and the concept of updated human rights in regards to the "future" of the internet, but also felt somewhat flawed in more than a few ways.For one, the clout gained from having an obvious and deep knowledge of the technical source material - including the excellent depth of universe in the speculative fiction - the actual presentation loses credibility when the only form of "alternative" communication presented is largely based on e-mail and "leetspeak," an unfortunate and immature evolution of a once interesting subculuture. Having characters describe others as "h4wt" immediately removes them from figures of knowledge to just teenagers. That's a problem the book has a whole, the separation of "us" and "them" generally including adults vs. kids, even when a distinct line was never drawn. On a similar note, the use of a classroom to present the "speculative" portion of fiction while mixing in plenty of historical background was initially cliched, but by carrying the encylclopedic tone throughout other similar passages presenting technical information, Doctorow makes his book both a primer to youth growing up only knowing a connected world, and an interesting (though brief) glance into the actual-why of his maybe-when.The representation of San Francisco was more than decent, and the idea of a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge followed by technological anarchy as a starting point for the novel was instantly gripping, but all that energy was lost in the warbling, lackadaisical delivery of the narrative. In short, there were far too many uninteresting and superfulous characters, locations and plot devices that cluttered up the important ideas, bogging them down with what honestly ended up feeling like fanservice. The LARP storyline, revealing the main character as a "past offender," isn't nearly pivotal enough of a point to justify the repeated and mysterious references. By the end it feels like a larger part of a continuing universe, with oddly pre-established characters moving in and out with only the briefest of introduction and characterization. By the end of the novel characters shift in and out of the story so quickly they might as well not have names.Loved the idea of a "free" XBox replacement from Microsoft becoming the core of a world-wide universe of free communication, as well as the take on government rights versus openly monitoring the populous, namely high school students. Many of the technical aspects were interesting and fresh, with a definite lean towards youth culture, and although they occasionally felt pandering, I guess I'm hardly the target audience at 24, so who knows. (I will point out that while many people told me this was "young adult fiction that wouldn't bore adults," I can't help but disagree; everything about Little Brother felt like a dumbed down, cheapened version of Doctorow's normally insightful, whimsical, hilarious work. Distinctly pedestrian and juvenile. [Comparatively.:])I dunno. I know this review itself is rambling, but I couldn't find a foothold in the universe, story or characters. Individual elements were solid and with a more streamlined narrative everything may have come together better, but as it is Little Brother is a brilliant concept bogged down by uninteresting characters and events. ( )

I'm over 25 so I shouldn't be trusted, but I like this book. There are some over simplifications here and there and at times the explanations seem to break the story's flow, but over all I liked the story and the book almost seemed to me to be an introduction to these technologies for the uninitiated with a story thrown in to tie it all together. I do think that Cory's preaching to the choir here a little bit, but I hope that once the choir reads the book they'll give it to someone outside the circle to read.

I regularly use Tor, Public key encryption and have dabbled with RFIDs so it was nice to see a mainstream book use the technologies intelligently. One great part of the book is the forward and afterward that explains the technologies and where to go for more information. This makes it great as a starting point for someone interested in protecting their privacy as not only does it show where to go to get the required software but also some of the how and why.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. ( )