Little Brother

by Cory Doctorow

Other authors: See the other authors section.

Series: Little Brother (1)

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Conversations / Mentions
4,437	352	1,106	(4.05)	2 / 263

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231
1984 by George Orwell (JFDR)
JFDR: 1984's Big Brother is Little Brother's namesake.
100
Feed by M. T. Anderson (kellyholmes)
50
For the Win by Cory Doctorow (jshrop)
51
Makers by Cory Doctorow (SheReads)
51
The Hacker Crackdown: Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier by Bruce Sterling (persky)
persky: The book that turned Doctorow on to the EFF and a real world account of various government agencies cracking down on teenage hackers.
20
Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow (PghDragonMan)
20
After by Francine Prose (meggyweg)
31
Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow (ahstrick)
10
The Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian (strande)
strande: In chapter thirteen, Ange and Marcus call the media whores. "In fact, that's an insult to hardworking whores everywhere. They're, they're profiteers." Media Monopoly is a whole book about how the media turned into profiteers.
10
Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson (kaledrina)
10
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (whymaggiemay)
whymaggiemay: Both about teens fighting back against the greater power using computers.
10
Ink by Sabrina Vourvoulias (reconditereader)
reconditereader: Both involve dystopias, resistance, oppression, technology, and interesting characters.
10
Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho by Jon Katz (writecathy)
10
Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy (kraaivrouw)
10
Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller (MyriadBooks)
MyriadBooks: For knowledge, the use and distribution, general purpose. Best for teens.
54
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (JFDR)
10
So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld (kellyholmes)
10
The Gospel According to Larry by Janet Tashjian (JFDR)
00
Awaken by Katie Kacvinsky (kaledrina)
11
Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Manus Pinkwater (persky)
persky: From the afterword "Many novelists have tackled parts of the story in Little Brother. Daniel Pinkwater’s towering comic masterpiece ... is a book that every geek needs to read."

(see all 30 recommendations)

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Dystopian and Apocalyptic Literature (139)

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Future Politics Political Science 300 (8)

Broderick and Di Filippo's Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010 (32)

Unshelved Book Clubs (65)

Books Set in San Francisco (Cities) (26)

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Topics	messages	Last message
The Green Dragon : JUNE - SPOILERS - Little Brother	15 unread / 15	Jarandel, June 2014
The Green Dragon : JUNE - NO SPOILERS - Little Brother	5 unread / 5	Sakerfalcon, May 2014

» See also 263 mentions

▾Member reviews

English (339) German (3) Italian (3) Hungarian (2) Spanish (1) French (1) Dutch (1) Indonesian (1) Catalan (1) All (352)

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Showing 1-5 of 339 (next | show all)

“Most of us choose 'none of the above'. It’s not working. You have to choose—choose freedom."

5/5 because it made me think, I learned something from it & it made me all teary eyed at the end (yes, I have a soft spot for a good 'ol vindication).

A great and really interesting bit of speculative fiction that works pretty close to the border of reality. (

)

kephradyx | Jun 20, 2017 |

This took me a while to get into. After reading the first few chapters, I was loathe to pick it up for the next week. By the midway point, it felt like a car-accident; not pleasurable to watch, but something that you feel you *have* to watch. It redeems itself by the end, thankfully, and I ended up reading the last third of it during dinner one evening. (

)

benuathanasia | Jan 18, 2017 |

Perhaps my opinion will change in a few years, but I found this to be so topical considering our nation's political environment that it kept distracting me from the flow of the story. Not preachy, not hectoring, not snarky; just overly relevant to current events. (

)

bensdad00 | Jan 10, 2017 |

Only got up to page 123 in this, just like For The Win and Someone Comes to Town ... There's definitely something like a Cory Doctrow effect , where you get to page 123 and the book just flatlines ( beeeep.... ) It's not that the books are bad ; they're just like Captian Kangaroo reads Wired magazine or something ~ (

)

Baku-X | Jan 10, 2017 |

Humble eBook Bundle 2

GoldenDarter | Sep 15, 2016 |

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Showing 1-5 of 339 (next | show all)

▾Published reviews

2 reviews

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thingScore 75

Little Brother represents a great step forward in the burgeoning subgenre of dystopian young-adult SF. It brings a greater degree of political sophistication, geekiness and civil disobedience to a genre that was already serving up a milder dose of rebellion. After this, no YA novel will be able to get away with watering down its youthful revolution.

added by PhoenixTerran | editio9, Charlie Jane Anders (Apr 23, 2009)

MY favorite thing about “Little Brother” is that every page is charged with an authentic sense of the personal and ethical need for a better relationship to information technology, a visceral sense that one’s continued dignity and independence depend on it: “My technology was working for me, serving me, protecting me. It wasn’t spying on me. This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.”

I can’t help being on this book’s side, even in its clunkiest moments. It’s a neat story and a cogently written, passionately felt argument.

added by Aerrin99 | editNew York Times, Austin Grossman (Sep 12, 2008)

▾Other authors

» Add other authors (7 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Cory Doctorow	—	primary author	all editions	calculated
Hayden, Patrick Nielsen	Editor	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Heyborne, Kirby	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Heyborne, Kirby	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Hoteling, Spring	Designer	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Huang, Andrew	Afterword	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Lutjen, Peter	Cover designer	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Schneier, Bruce	Afterword	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Shimizu, Yuko	Cover artist	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Work-to-work relationships

Was inspired by

1984 by George Orwell

Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering by Andrew Huang

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▾Common Knowledge

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For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.

Series (with order)

Little Brother (1)

Canonical title

Little Brother

Original title

Little Brother

Alternative titles

Information from the Italian Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.

Little Brother

Original publication date

2008-04-29

People/Characters

Marcus Yallow (w1n5t0n) (m1k3y)

Vanessa "Van" Pak

Darryl Glover

Jose-Luis "Jolu" Torrez

Angela Carvelli

Important places

San Francisco, California, USA

Treasure Island, California, USA

Mission Hill, San Francisco, California, USA

Important events

Related movies

Awards and honors

Nebula Nominee (2008.1|Novel, 2008)

Emperor Norton Award (2008)

Publisher's Weekly Best Book (Children's Fiction, 2008)

SF Site Editor's Choice (2008)

(show all 30 items)

Epigraph

Dedication

For Alice, who makes me whole

First words

I'm a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco's sunny Mission district, and that makes me one of the most surveilled people in the world.

Quotations

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Nielsen Hayden, Patrick

Blurbers

Publisher series

Original language

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (3)

Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars

Golden Duck Award

Little Brother (Doctorow novel)

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

The ultimate tale of teen rebellion -- one seventeen-year-old against the surveillance state. Big Brother is watching you. Who's watching back? Marcus is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works -- and how to work the system. Smart, fast and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school's intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems. But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison, where they're mercilessly interrogated for days. When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state, where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Haiku summary

▾Book descriptions

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0765319853, Hardcover)

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:18:29 -0400)

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▾Library descriptions

After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.… (more)

» see all 3 descriptions