Science fiction’s roots lie in fare intended for consumption by young adults, but as the genre has grown up and authors struggled for legitimacy in literary circles, the YA contingent has gotten the short end of the stick, subsisting on licensed material and crappy patronization (MAXIMUM RIDE comes to mind), while a few writers (Scott Westerfeld among them) have given this huge readership the quality yarns it deserves. LITTLE BROTHER is Cory Doctorow’s first young-adult novel, and Westerfeld has some serious competition.
LITTLE BROTHER is at its core about freedom and the obligation citizens have to protect their society from unjust infringements of that freedom. The protagonist, Marcus, is a technologically skilled San Francisco kid who’s become adept at foiling his school’s surveillance procedures to skip school and screw around with his friends both in and out of class. When a terrorist attack hits the city and turns his world all screwy, Marcus turns his skills toward fighting an increasingly totalitarian “homeland security” presence in his hometown and to get even with an apparatus that seriously abused his rights. Using hacked game consoles and plenty of cryptological and technological know-how, Marcus mounts a revolution from his bedroom, managing to score a date or two on the way.
To mashup two titles from Neal Stephenson, LITTLE BROTHER’s subtitle could very well be A YOUNG MAN’S (OR LADY’S) ILLUSTRATED CRYPTONOMICON. Doctorow uses his tremendous technical and literary expertise to clearly explain to younger readers:
• How to construct an underground communications network while ensuring privacy online and off.
• And why this is important, as The Man uses the terrorist bogeyman to slowly erode the freedoms we in the U.S. are guaranteed by the Constitution.
Readers familiar with Doctorow’s work and his posts on Boingboing.net know that this is right in his intellectual wheelhouse, and his arguments are purified and perfected as he boils them down to their most powerful essences. His views on personal freedom and the role of the state in preventing “terror” aren’t always one-sided, though. Various characters throughout LITTLE BROTHER provide counterpoint to Marcus’ (and Doctorow’s, seemingly) opinions, and they’re not simple straw men blown down with a witty remark. The author understands that there are viewpoints other than his, acknowledging their existence at the same time that he skillfully showcases the flaws in the “security above all” worldview.
I honestly never read a book as subversive as LITTLE BROTHER when I was young (well, somehow a copy of THE BOURNE IDENTITY made its way into the library of a Catholic elementary school in Wisconsin and I read that in seventh grade, but the only really subversive part of that was the fact that I was allowed to read it — even the sex parts — during school), but I wish I had.
This is an important novel, not only in terms of putting other views of the world in front of kids increasingly numbed by everpresent and ridiculous levels of security and absurd privacy intrusions, but also from a science-fiction standpoint — Doctorow provides an excellent opportunity for youth to be exposed to high-quality writing that doesn’t patronize. And while its main intent is to foment a pubescent technological rebellion, adults will dig LITTLE BROTHER as a reminder that it’s never to late to be subversive and as something to think about before starting a sentence with “these kids nowadays.”
Doctorow’s other novels were tremendous (especially SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN), but I think his true calling is in the young-adult realm, shaping the views of teenagers as the genre’s heavyweights once did. LITTLE BROTHER is masterful in both its message and its timing, and the more teens get their hands on this book, the better our world will be 10 years from now. —Ryun Patterson
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN by Cory Doctorow
