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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Marcus, geeky high school student, is rounded up by Homeland Security after a terrorist attack on San Francisco. Three of his friends are taken in with him, but only two come out. Marcus vows revenge, armed with a hacked xbox and a classically seventeen-year-old understanding of the Constitution.

Pure geek revenge fantasy, mixed with real fear under the clenching hand of a very near-future police state. It's viscerally satisfying because what's done to Marcus is awful, but he's angry and he's smart as all hell, and he just won't roll over. I have a huge emotional kink for the intersection of counterculture and political revolution, and this hit it just right. It's a book that makes you proud to be a geek.

Unfortunately, the book suffers on its terms. It's written for young adults, which is part of the point – "never trust anyone over 25." But Marcus's debates about the Constitution are tragically, agonizingly high school. Much better to let his actions speak for themselves, as reckless and brilliant as they are.

And my other problem is that this book only delivered the one punch, and didn't follow through with two. It was very effective at arguing that security measures aren't security when they just invade everyone's privacy and don't work. It doesn't follow through and argue that security and privacy aren't antithetical. Mouthing rights rhetoric doesn't get you anywhere there – that sort of discourse fails completely when you have a competing rights scenario like safety/freedom. Far more effective and complex to deconstruct the dichotomy, but that didn't happen here.

Available for free download here

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