I’ve been reading Boing Boing for a while now. About the time I started reading BB I started reading Cory Doctorow as well, since the two go hand in hand. He recently released a new book, Little Brother.
Since he won’t shut the fuck up about the book (much love, man, I swear) I decided that it was time to read it. If only to find out if the praise Neil Gaiman has been giving the damn thing is straight-up honest or if Cory’s just been slipping him envelopes full of hundreds. And I quote:
…I’d recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I’ve read this year, and I’d want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can. Because I think it’ll change lives. Because some kids, maybe just a few, won’t be the same after they’ve read it. Maybe they’ll change politically, maybe technologically. Maybe it’ll just be the first book they loved or that spoke to their inner geek. Maybe they’ll want to argue about it and disagree with it. Maybe they’ll want to open their computer and see what’s in there. I don’t know. It made me want to be 13 again right now and reading it for the first time, and then go out and make the world better or stranger or odder. It’s a wonderful, important book, in a way that renders its flaws pretty much meaningless.
Holy christ man, what sort of an interest rate do you get on a loan for a quote like that?
With praise like that wandering around, I had to read it eventually. Plus, I was more pissed off at the universe than usual and wanted to get away for a while.
I finished it in three sittings. It’s really good. I mean really, really good. Definitely good enough to warrant that quote. In fact, I liked it so damn much I bought the thing, and from a market point of view, that’s the highest praise I can give it. I may sit down and re-read it in dead-tree format.
Like the lion’s share of Cory’s work, it’s available for free, in somewhere around a jillion formats. I suggest you blow off reading this bullshit and go read it right now. When you’re done come back and we can compare notes.
It’s written as a young adult novel and as such it felt a little simple. It was obviously intended for younger folks, but unless you’re stuck so far up your own ass you can retaste your own lunch, that won’t stop you from enjoying it. The technology described in it is very close to reality – and comfortingly so. I found myself wanting to sign random things after reading it. I had to laugh at the positive quote in the inside flap of the dust jacket from Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft, a company who would undoubtedly be suing the everliving hell out of anybody brave enough to publicly distribute the fictional ParanoidXbox for violating the equally fictional Xbox Universal’s EULA.
The future of devices (and their licensors) is not the only scary part, though. I won’t give away anything the dust jacket won’t, but Cory’s fictional interpretation of the Department of Homeland Security (*shiver*) is far too close to reality for comfort. Marcus’ dad also sounds frustratingly familiar – in his conversations with his father I heard echoes of all the voices around me every day in Southern Idaho – “They’re protecting us from the terrorists. We should let them do their jobs.” “All those terrorist types are evil. We should kill them all. They’d do the same to us!” It creeps me out to think about it.
I don’t suppose saying that it has a happy ending spoils too much. But it was a really wonderful conclusion to the story. Especially considering that the world of scifi seems to consistently have a dearth of writers capable of composing a proper conclusion. Or perhaps I’m just channeling Snow Crash again.
The whole book affected me the same way it affected Neil – I wanted desperately to be young again, to be able to spend hours or days or perhaps a whole fucking summer plugging away at a problem, watching the world go by around me. I found myself wishing I could take off on my bike at two AM and ride around the neighborhood, nonchalantly pedaling around, breathing the clean air and hoping for inspiration. Or maybe just taking off at the speed of whatever, going up through gears trying to set a new land speed record on the deserted streets of Twin Falls. I miss staying up until 5 or 6 in the morning, madly typing as fast as my fingers would fly or just reading until my eyes were so sore I could barely see well enough to stagger into bed. It is a rare occasion indeed that brings back those memories, the desire to be a part of something far, far larger than you are, and yet knowing that your contribution still absolutely makes a difference. I’d say that this alone makes the book worthwhile. If we could get a book like this in the hands of the right people, perhaps we’d end up with a lot more Cory Doctorows and a lot less of me. And the world would be a far better place for it.
I suppose the highest praise I could give this book, aside from the aforementioned usage of currency to purchase tangible goods, would be to say that it’s crossed my mind more than once to let my mom read this. Scifi’s not usually her bag, but she does dig young adult adventure stories and seemed to have quite a time reading all the Hardy Boys novels I used to read when I was a kid. But this might be a bit edgy for her. I don’t remember Frank and Joe using public-key crypto.
