Little Brother & Homeland

Little Brother #1-2

by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow's two New York Times bestselling novels of youthful rebellion against the torture-and-surveillance state - now available in a softcover omnibus.

"A wonderful, important book ... I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year." -Neil Gaiman

Little Brother
Marcus Yallow is seventeen years old when he skips school and finds himself caught in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his friends are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they are brutally interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state. He knows that no one will believe him, which leaves him one option: to take down the DHS himself. Can one brilliant teenage hacker actually fight back? Maybe, but only if he's very careful...and if he chooses his friends well.

Homeland
A few years after the events of Little Brother, California's economy collapses and Marcus finds himself employed by a crusading politician who promises reform. Then his former nemesis, Masha, emerges with a thumbdrive containing WikiLeaks-style evidence of government wrongdoing. When Marcus witnesses Masha's kidnapping by the same agents who detained and tortured him earlier, he has to decide whether to save her or leak the archive that will cost his employer the election and put thousands at risk.

Surrounded by friends who consider him a hacker hero, stalked by people who look like they're used to inflicting pain, Marcus has to act, and act fast.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Technology, Speculative Fiction, Dystopia, Cyberpunk, Young Adult

688 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my review for “Little Brother” and “Homeland”, so there might be spoilers for the first book in the second part of the review. You’ve been warned!

--

“Little Brother”

As I read this, what went through my mind was “George Orwell would be so proud!”. Which is an upsetting thought, really.

Sure, because of the target demographic, the language is a little “young”, there’s a lot of explanation of concepts I was familiar with (for the benefit of people who are less tech-savvy and less paranoid than me). But the core of this book is massively important, because it’s a book about civil liberties and human rights, and about why thinking critically and questioning authority matters. It’s about why you can’t always trust the government, even if you think it has good intentions, and it’s about why you really need to know a few basic things about how the Internet works.

Marcus Yallow was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was near a BART station when a terrorist attack took down the Bay Bridge and part of the underground of San Francisco. His friend Darryl was injured in the human stampede to get away, and he was trying to flag down a first responder for help, but the vehicle that stopped for him was a Department of Homeland Security tank. Because he and his friends are very clever, if a bit too devil-may-care, with their use of technology, they are immediately flagged as suspect by the good old DHS, and because Marcus has a smart mouth, they give him a very rough time while they hold him in custody. And because he was raised to stand up for himself, to push back against injustice and to believe in basic stuff like the right to privacy and freedom of association, he decides that he is going to fight back, because he simply can’t stand to watch the country he loves become a police state right before his eyes.

This is only labeled speculative fiction because no one bombed the Bay Bridge: all the technology Doctorow talks about is real, and currently being used pretty much as described. And the fact is that most people don’t have a solid grasp of the level to which they are being constantly monitored, how that information is being used or stored and how the math behind it all works. There is a very valid reason Edward Snowden wrote the introduction to this omnibus edition.

Aside from the part where it’s creepily believable, “Little Brother” is a fun, quick read, and while I don’t find the characters entirely believable, it’s not hard to root for their idealism.

--

“Homeland”

Two years after the events of “Little Brother”, Marcus is enjoying a few days of escape at Burning Man when he bumps into his old frenemy Masha: she is still on the lam, and she hands him a USB key with very clear instructions to publish it’s content should she go missing. Marcus is not sure he can trust her, but he’s barely had time to turn around that he sees Masha getting kidnapped by someone he’d hoped he’d never have to see again. He gets back to San Francisco, where a new job waits for him: webmaster for a senatorial candidate that actually inspires him, and who wants him to help make a difference. But can he do that and follow Masha’s instructions about the data she gave him?

The second book is a great continuation to “Little Brother”, where an older and more cautious Marcus tries to do the right thing, and make the world a better place – while drinking jugs and jugs of cold-brewed coffee. It also has the same strengths and weaknesses as the first book: the tone is a bit young, and if you are familiar with the concepts Doctorow describes, it can feel quite wordy, but it’s fun, fast-paced and very thought-provoking.

I really appreciate how passionate Doctorow is about the topics of security, freedom, community and accountability. He uses that passion to draw a bleak portrait of post 9/11 America, but not a hopeless one; rather than bringing you down, his Orwellian tale aims to galvanize people, motivate them to get involved in any way they can to make their country a better place. Of course, he is not a prose-stylist, he sometimes loses himself in exposition, and there were a few times where I rolled my eyes, but then, the narrator is a seventeen year old boy – a very smart one, I grant you, but still, teenage boys… I understand why some people found these books preachy, because they certainly can be at times. Alas, I think that the things being preached on the page are very relevant and very important – and deserve to be emphasized. Even if you feel like you have nothing to hide.

I think everyone should read these books. They ring more true than ever, even a few years after their original publication. Also, maybe, donate a few bucks to the EFF.

[Robert Kingett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Homeland is much better written for a wide array of reasons. And, I get it, adults are dumb and stupid, yeah, yeah, but why, oh why, do these teenagers act like, well, stereotypical teenagers? I loved the plots of the books, but I wanted anybody else to be the MC. In fact, I was hoping the main character was a POC hacker, but, nope. Just whiteness everywhere. But, well, then again, I’m 31, so I’m dumb, right?

I wanted to love this series, but I just liked it. It was fun. It is important, but I probably will not be reading it again. The main character, Marcus, was the kill joy. I wanted, so badly, for anybody else to be the MC of these 2 books.

[Anne Abelsæth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bøkene får en ekstra dimensjon når man vet at det var denne Snowden leste da han satt på hotellet i Hong kong og ventet på journalistene..

[John Stanifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

It would be hard not to be intrigued by a book that has this on the cover:

"With a new introduction by Edward Snowden"

Say what? One of the world's most wanted men agreed (in 2020, no less, according to the copyright page) to write a foreword to a pair of books about a teenage hacker fighting against government overreach and abuse of power?

Yep. And it turns out "Little Brother" was the book Snowden was reading at the time he did the thing that made him (in)famous.

I'd say that merits some attention.

These two books are basically 1984 for the 24/7 surveillance age, only the hero is more Wade Watts (of Ready Player One fame) than Winston Smith.

And there are some passages in these books that are very disquieting.

"Oh, they had reasons. There were emergencies. Circumstances. It was all really regrettable. But there were always emergencies, weren't there? My whole nineteen years on this earth had been one long emergency, according to all the papers and the TV. When would the emergencies finally end? Would there be a day when unicorns pranced through the Mission and pronounced an end to hostilities around the world, a return to the promised normalcy, with jobs and freedom for all?"
~Doctorow, Little Brother & Homeland, p.621

It's amazing what the human race will tolerate in the name of . . . emergencies.

Don't get me wrong. I get the sense there's plenty I would disagree with Doctorow on. But it's hard not to see that he makes some valid points about how very, very wrong government can go when it cites protecting people as a reason for . . . questionable actions.

[FunkyPlaid · Rating 3 out of 5]

My introduction to Doctorow came through his speculative adult fiction publications For the Win and the four excellent short stories in Radicalized, and I really appreciated the vision, tone, and maturity of his style. I picked up this double-dip into the world of Marcus Yallow to follow up with Doctorow's other popular work, but it didn't hit me in the same way. Naturally, it's mostly because Little Brother and Homeland are written for young adults and both carry a different pace and style altogether. But while it's rougher and plainer prose, it's also more diluted, less detailed or even careful, harder to swallow, and – playing the biggest part in my disappointment – features way too much Cory Doctorow in the larger story.

Both books are obviously based upon many of the author's personal experiences in tech, security, and maker culture during the cresting of the San Francisco Otaku scene in the late 1990s, and Homeland is particularly rife with it to the point of being precious in a self-referential, Scalzi-like manner. Half of the second book is an advertisement for Burning Man and Noisebridge, and I'm honestly shocked at the amount of space he spends explaining how cool it is to participate in what I've come to consider to be pretty nauseatingly self-important communities. I was likewise annoyed by the main character's repeated and unnecessary proselytizing of coffee snobbery and his obsession with Wil Wheaton, both of which are obvious idiosyncrasies of the author, added to all of the other SF techbro tropes that I actually lived through quite intimately in precisely the same space. This all comes off like a personal Doctorow manifesto about what all young people should be doing to be considered cool, and then they can eventually save society with that newfound jurisdiction.

It's perfectly okay that these books weren't for me and I'm totally clear that my personal experiences play a part in this reaction. I'm confident that if I'd read them as a younger person on the search for meaning and community and a subversive (Cory says it's righteous) cause, I'd have been all over them. In a way, that's concerning, because I don't think Marcus Yallow is much of a hero, and therefore not a great role model for young adults to be emulating, like Doctorow and his guest writers urge readers to do in both the foreword and afterword. Yallow is really not much more than an intellectually brilliant but remarkably petulant and self-involved, generally unlikeable adolescent who dreams himself into an epic of public heroism that nobody over the age of twenty-five can possibly understand or achieve. Casting binary tropes in this way runs the danger of broadening the generation gap at a time when power appears to be more equitable to youthful hackers flying drones, organizing flash-mobs, and trading sensitive information on the darknet. Meanwhile, the wizened politicians are raising the stakes of what constitutes real power, and we all continue to be thralls to that system. Burning Man won't save us from it.

I'm down with Snowden and Swartz (RIP), but Yallow and, through him, Doctorow, isn't really speaking truth to power with this brand of youthful rebellion. He's only partitioning it. Yet I'm all aboard to continue exploring Cory's other speculative fiction in the hopes that, like with his brilliant vignettes in Radicalized, he leads with less of his personal Hipster ethos.

[Matthew Shinker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marcus Yallow and his motley crew of friends and hackers make for interesting reading. I made a little mistake by reading book #3 of 3 first, and then I had to backtrack to read this - books 1 and 2. While being a little shocked and surprised at the amount of surveillance on us, as average citizens - we make it incredibly easy. But I enjoyed this series and have recommended it to friends.

Throughout these books there's information about how to setup a laptop and phone that doesn't leak as much information. If you ever load up tools like Fiddler or Wireshark to see all your network traffic, you'll be shocked at how chatty our technology is. The apps on our cell phones want access to our contacts, location data, search history, etc. It's because app development companies are capturing troves of our personal information. These aren't conspiracy theories, these are well known facts.

Unlike Neal Stephenson, Cory Doctorow does just enough character development to make his characters believable and relatable. Then he takes off with amazing story telling. I wish these books would get turned into movies.

[Markovian Muse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously, these were written about a decade ago, give or take. I don’t have much to comment other than it is brilliant Doctorow and you should read all his books if you haven’t. He KNOWS the stuff he writes about. And the book is prescient. How tragic and ironic that the afterword was written by Aaron Swartz not long before his death.

[.W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty good mix of technical writing and character building. Homeland was a downshift from Little Brother.

like many others i found Marcus to be a whiny ass most of the time, and surprisingly judgmental of those around him (Liam in Homeland, "old people" lololol) when they didn't fit into his particular brand of weird. you'd think outsiders would band together, but alas.

[Chris W.M. Vasques · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got right to the end of this one, but the teen romance lost me completely once it shifted to that. I ended up giving absolutely zero shits about 2 teenagers. I didn't even finish it after getting through 300 pages.

[Rod Van Meter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two novels in one edition, with continuing characters. Really hard to put down, I zoomed through them both, but this is essentially political polemic about privacy and the dangers of the surveillance state presented as literature. Enjoyable, but know what you're getting before you read!

[Douglas Anstruther · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. Absolute essential for politically active techno-nerds

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Homeland better.

[Des · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pair of modern classics of dystopian SF.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this during my teenage years on the beach - it was the first time a book made me feel something and think deeply.

[Keb Sills · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the most deep story but improved a little by the end

[Dennis McClure · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not great literature, but I found it engrossing. A horror story of the computer age.

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. The premise is extremely interesting, and relevant. The ideas in the book and overall theme help create a very (potentially) interesting narrative. That's where my good praises stop, the problem with these books is the main character: Marcus.
Marcus is so irritating and cringy, it made it nearly impossible to finish the book. There were so many moments that I wanted to throw the book out of a window.
I understand that the book takes place from his perspective, but, damn is he just the literal worst. His internal monologues seem unnatural and forced. His relationship with the people around him seem so disingenuous. It makes it impossible to root for him, at almost every turn, I found myself rooting against him. It's not like I was rooting for the DHS (because, hell no!) I just hated Marcus that much.
There's an entire scene where this man has the caucasity to describe what Churros are. It is honestly one of the worst things I was forced to read. This cringy white 16 year-old explaining Churros. It was, ridiculous, and uncomfortable.
The book is just filled with so many unnecessary and uncomfortable moments, it made it really hard to finish this book.
You could strip 60% of the context of Little Brother & Homeland and you would have a better story that isn't bogged down with Marcus' cringe, and someone mansplaining basic technologies.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little scary

But totally engaging. Paranoia may seem like overkill with people wanting to live off the grid, etc, but Cory Doctorow will make those actions seem pretty practical.