Little Brother
Ratings188
Average rating3.9
Marcus on nuori mies, joka sattuu väärään paikkaan väärään aikaan. Marcus on kavereidensa kanssa livistänyt koulusta pelaamaan ARG-peli Harajuku Fun Madnessia, kun San Franciscossa tapahtuu massiivinen terrori-isku. Marcuksen kaveri loukkaantuu, mutta kun kaverit yrittävät pyytää apua, Department of Homeland Security nappaa heidät talteen epäiltyinä terrori-iskuista ja kuljettaa jonnekin aggressiivisiin kuulusteluihin, joissa ei tavallisista pidätettyjen oikeuksista ole tietoa.
Marcus ei katoa järjestelmän pyörteisiin, vaan pääsee vapaaksi. DHS lupaa kuitenkin pitää Marcuksen tekemisiä silmällä. Marcus ei lannistu, vaan aloittaa vastarintaliikkeen. DHS on tehnyt San Franciscosta poliisivaltion ja piinaa terrorismin vastaisen sodan nimissä viattomia kaupunkilaisia. DHS on muun muassa laittanut Marcuksen läppärin tarkkailuun. Marcus ei hätkähdä, vaan rakentaa Xboxista ja vahvasti salatusta Linuxista Xnet-verkon, jota DHS ei pysty vakoilemaan. Pikkuhiljaa Marcuksesta tulee jonkinlainen vallankumousjohtaja, joka organisoi vastarintaa DHS:ää kohtaan.
Little Brother on nuortenkirjaksi tuhti paketti. Se on vallankumouksellinen ja opettavainen. Se kannustaa vastustamaan mielivaltaa ja yksityisyyden loukkaamista epämääräisen yleisen hyvän nimissä. Kirjaan mahtuu paljon luennointia tarpeellisista asioista, kuten kansalaisoikeuksista ja kryptografiasta. Se on julma kuva kylmästä tulevaisuudesta – tai nykypäivästä, kyllä maailmaan näin hullua menoa terrorismin (ja piratismin ja lapsipornon) vastaisen taistelun nimissä mahtuu. Little Brother on moderni version Vuonna 1984:stä ja sellaisena sekä pelottava että tarpeellinen.
Kirjan saa ekirjana ilmaiseksi Doctorow'n nettisivuilta. (7.3.2012)
Agree with msdaisylaurel's review. I had heard such great things about Cory, but the transphobia completely turned me off. No nuance either. Maybe his newer stuff is better.
Goeie YA. Spannend. Politiek nuttig. Aansporing tot zelf denken en tot programmeren en kritische hackersmentaliteits
This book is hilarious, some kind of ready player one fantasy but about infosec and hacking culture instead of videogames.
Ameno y educativo. Muy recomendable para quien no tenga mucha idea sobre seguridad.
Un poco demasiado peliculero y lenguaje es demasiado simple.
An extremely interesting dystopia that is modeled after the current times and addresses the computer age that we have found ourselves in. I loved this main character and the rebellion he inadvertantly started. I love when a book inspires you to do better.
I guess perspective makes a huge difference to the books you read. Being from the populous part of the world, the premise of this book itself does not raise any connect with me and once this happens you can't really understand what the big deal is about. What does Marcus so protective about? What is the issue if people know you surf porn/hacking sites/search random stuff. What is the deal about people using data to track you? The rest of the book thus seems like a mix of theories from the web put together to explain the future and current technologies. Cory does a good job of blurring what is currently available and what will happen in the future and that's about all I give this book points for.
My first Cory Doctorow book. It reads like a technoparanoiac's fanfic about a slightly-counterfactual near-history, mashing up Anonymous and Occupy. This is one of those YA novels that is hard for adults to appreciate. I did not find it enriching to read a 17-year-old's rants about LARPing, city planning or basic crypto principles. It's also sort of distracting how the story seems to take place around 2008 (when the book was first published) so the technology described in it sounds just slightly obsolete. However, overall, the story moves fast and is fairly entertaining. I imagine it'd make a pretty good movie.
“A worthy younger sibling to Orwell's 1984, Cory Doctorow's LITTLE BROTHER is lively, precocious, and most importantly, a little scary.”
Brian K Vaughn, author of Y: The Last Man
So, very nice to read and a wake up call to all cosy ppl like me or you.
Read this shit!!!
And Homeland 2!
Fascinating and thought-provoking concept, but the tell-don't-show style of writing gets tedious.
What I like about Cory Doctorow, ever since discovering him and his whole “give away my books as free pdfs” thing in 2007, is that he is the complete lifestyle package. He practices what he preaches, and he's often a veritable wealth of information and enthusiasm for certain predictable causes: most especially, civil liberties in the Age of Internet.
Although I consider Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom his best science fiction book, Little Brother is probably what he considers his (as-of-now) magnum opus. It's a lively, passionate, pedantic YA novel about the dangers of post-9/11 paranoias and how easy it is to invade individual privacy in our Facebooked, Interwebbed world. (What's most alarming, and Cory doesn't touch on it too much in this book, though, is our willingness to give that information away for free. cf: The Facebook prison, the Google empire.)
The story follows 17-year-old Marcus Yallow, a smart, snarky California hacker with a slightly preachy, morally-indignant vibe. i.e. Cory as a young man? Marcus definitely feels like a Mary Sue. But let me emphasize that that is FINE. We need people with such mentalities to shake us out of complacency. Anyway, Marcus is just livin' his life, hacking his way around his school system's invasive Internet measures and palling around with his bff Darryl as they go on geekquests and LARP adventures (live action role playing). Until, that is, Al Qaeda bombs the Bay Bridge and the kids are inadvertently pulled in by the Department of Homeland Security for questioning.
When Marcus is finally released, traumatized and horrified by what he had to endure, he goes on a Christ-like mission to get the DHS out of San Francisco and stop the slow erosion of our fundamental American values (freeedoooom) as freedom/privacy are traded in for “safety”/”security”. There's a slightly libertarian vibe there, now that I think about it, which I seem to often find in hacker culture. But nonetheless, I agree with Cory's politics - a lot of these purported “security” measures don't make us safer, and there have been a LOT of violations of basic civil liberties and just ethics since 9/11 (e.g. the drones...) - even if, at times, the story felt like a dystopian morality play which I had trouble totally believing.
Like For the Win, Cory's other YA work, the story suffers from somewhat extended didactic asides. We learn about Alan Turing, Berkeley in the 1960s, Wavy Gravey, cryptography, and all that. Most of the time, it feels like Cory is talking down to you. “Now, kids...” That sort of thing. But I take that as part of the YA package. Maybe? Now that I think of it, there are a lot of very good YA books (A Separate Peace, The Perks of Being a Wallflower) that avoid this didactic vibe entirely, so maybe I shouldn't cut Cory so much slack. I guess, on a meta level, I did like how he leveraged the Bay Area setting to link our current, apathy-ridden civil rights struggles (the commodification of the “social”) to the more glamorous civil rights struggles of the 1960s. As Mario Savio would say, maybe we should be throwing our bodies onto Facebook and MAKING IT STOP.
Anyway, overall, I really enjoyed it. When Cory's on his A game, it's hard not to get swept up in his politics and passion. I'm not a hacker by any definition, but I do loiter around Wired and BoingBoing and think about these things. This book gave me a lot of new things to think about and loiter around. Definitely recommended, and I'm now happy to be prepped for his newly-released sequel, Homeland.
A great place to start for those who are interested in how security systems and government policies affects normal people.
Addressed as a fairly young novel a subject of great and current concern.
Very good and real information. Looking forward to the next one. Homeland.
Short review: good fictional look at issues of privacy, government over-reach, cyber-security, civil liberties, all wrapped up in a young adult book. Mostly very good, but can veer into the propaganda feel occasionally.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/little-brother/
This book is good, not Orwellian good, but worth a read, nonetheless. Doctorow paints a very dark picture of the Feds, so dark in fact, he undercuts his “message” by overstating the threat to our civil liberties. Some will reject his argument out of hand. If even one of the Feds “did the right thing” this speculative narrative would have been more believable and his message would have been accepted more broadly.
Oh my God. I was not thrilled when this book was assigned for my YA lit class because I did not think some book about teenage hackers was going to be my cup of tea. But actually it was an incredible read. I read it all in one day because I could not put it down. (Okay and also I had a 6-hour flight that day.) Super intense and very believable.
Oh and it made me way paranoid about, like, everything. READ THIS, even if you don't like computers, or if you don't like YA lit, or like, whatever. Read it.
Could do without the “how the internet and cryptography works” infodumps... I'd give it 2,5 stars, but having to chose 2 or 3 I say 3.
This is not a pleasant book. This is an angry, disturbing, ugly book. It made me feel worried and hopeless the way that reading about politics always does, but at the same time, I couldn't put it down, and when I did I couldn't get it out of my head. It's an important book, and frighteningly realistic. You should read it. You won't enjoy it, but you should read it.
Doctorow's first YA novel is a post 9/11 story looking at the effects of the “war on terror” and the increased surveillance North Americans have been under since then. It's a good, fun story with a punky, “stick it to the man” kind of attitude that teaches its youthful audience to be healthily cautious of authority.
Of course, this being a Cory Doctorow novel, you at times get the feeling that you'‘re reading an essay on internet privacy issues as much as you are a sci-fi story, but that's simply the man's style - either you accept it or you don't. It seems to stick out a little more because the protagonist, Marcus, is only 17, and he seems to be one of the smartest, more well-informed 17 year olds you'll ever meet, but I think that's because he's meant to be seen as a heroic figure for the primary audience.
There's a lot to like in this story about a teen trapped in 1984ish hell courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security. Accurate descriptions of technology. A believable telling of our near future. Revolting against ‘The Man.' LARPing. Vampire LARPing. Vampire LARPing in San Francisco. I could go on.
The main character, Marcus, is written a little too perfect to be believable. Still, would recommend to geeky teens or teens looking for a good book written from a male POV.