LITTLE BROTHER
By Cory Doctorow
One fateful day after Marcus has skipped out of school using a variety of tricks to dodge the school's security system, terrorists blow up the San Fransisco Bay Bridge. Marcus and his friends just happen to be in the wrong part of town when it happens, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers swoop down upon them and carry them off to an undisclosed detention center. There, Marcus, Van, Darryl, and JoLu are bound, interrogated, and generally intimidated and humiliated into disclosing information about their phones, laptops, and other high-tech gadgets in their possession before being released several days later. Darryl had been injured during the initial terrorist attack, and was not released with his three friends. Marcus believes the worst, that Darryl has died in jail. Back at home, his parents have obviously had a bad few days, not knowing where he had been, but Marcus decides it is safer not to tell the truth. Besides, sometime during a torture session at the detention center, he had vowed to himself that he would pay DHS back for everything they had done to him. He can do that more easily if he keeps his parents in the dark. Marcus is one smart, tech-savvy kid, and soon has a virtually untraceable online network set up to spread the word about what had happened to him, and to plan and coordinte acts of sabotage against the DHS. Marcus's new handle, M1k3y, Little Brother, is born, and he becomes the reluctant leader of the free underground world.
This is a post 9-11 story about government gone crazy. The conflict is between two philosophies--the one that says it's OK to trample on people's civil rights if that's what it takes to keep citizens safe, and the one that says that only truly free people can ever be safe. In light of recent disclosures about torture and interrogation practices our government has sanctioned in recent years, this novel couldn't be more timely and thought-provoking. Here's what I don't like about this novel. As fascinating as the technological and political themes of this book are, I struggle to endorse it fully, because of the nonchalant way it treats teenage sex and alcohol use in several scenes in the story. Not a good message in that respect. Little Brother is on next year's Tayshas reading list .
--reviewed by Dail Sams--
No comments:
Post a Comment