COLUMN: New take on an old classic
A blatant but effective tribute to George Orwell’s classic novel “1984”, Cory Doctorow’s 2008 Young Adult novel “Little Brother” plays on the fears of the general population as well as the younger generation’s fight-back attitude.
The novel is set vaguely in the future, although it could just as easily be some alternate version of the present. Doctorow excels at fudging the line by using well-known settings like San Francisco neighborhoods with unfamiliar, advanced technology. In between, there are exaggerated versions of things we already know, like extra security in high schools.
A proficient gamer, hacker and rebel, Marcus and his friends are out chasing a lead on a combination video-game and geo-caching treasure hunt when an explosion rocks the Bay and the chaos begins.
Marcus and his friends are taken captive by the Department of Homeland Security due to their proximity to the attack and their high-tech phones and gaming gear, and three of four are released to a transformed San Francisco complete with Patriot Act-gone-wrong security measures and exponentially high rates of arrest and interrogation.
As news of the terrorist attack spreads, so does the panic and the increased security. Marcus starts an underground movement to counteract the government and media fronts about what is happening to their city, finding ways around gait-recognition software, ID-signatured public transportation passes and even cell phone encryptions.
His goal is not only to prove the police and military forces ineffective and even wrong, but to find out what happened to that fourth member of his gang – his best friend, Darryl.
The ensuing back-and-forth drama has just the right amount of the post-9/11 xenophobia and fear of what’s next, balanced with the political opposite, the battle for privacy and that all-American freedom.
Doctorow makes it all believable, from the character interactions to the way each plot-twist unfolds, even the futuristic devices and new version of cyberspace. I found myself suspecting many of these things exist, and we just don’t know about them yet.
Marcus and the other “rebels” with whom he joins forces are constantly in danger as local police and the DHS search for those behind the disruptions in their security measures. They are in just as much jeopardy from teachers and parents who see the government actions as for their own good and the safety of themselves and their children.
They rally around a skillfully encrypted network deemed “X-net” and the slogan “don’t trust anyone over 25.” The teens, and even some precariously-positioned adults, see the results of the initial attack as a basic violation of the Bill of Rights.
Along with their technology-based, internet-spread hacks and decryptions, the underground group pulls public stunts aimed at staying unidentifiable while at the same time calling attention to the extreme measures police will take to stop them from gathering.
Although their gas grenades and other tactics are supposedly nonlethal, the city of San Francisco is no stranger to injury and death before the war is over.
There’s a little fun, a little romance and a little becoming-an-adult thrown in to the mix to fill out the dystopia, and I’d recommend it for a weekend read, you won’t want to put it down for too long.
If you’ve read 1984 or any similarly-themed novels, this is a good addition to your repertoire. However, it is, I’m sorry to say, not for the technologically inept, as some of the new takes on already geektastic concepts might confuse the reader.
The good news is, anyone can give it a try, as Doctorow has the entire book available free for download on his website under a Creative Commons license.
– chelsey.gensel@aggiemail.usu.edu