The ultimate tale of teen rebellion -- one seventeen-year-old against the surveillance state. Big Brother is watching you. Who's watching back? Marcus is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works -- and how to work the system. Smart, fast and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school's intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.
But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison, where they're mercilessly interrogated for days. When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state, where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.
Reviews
'I'd recommend 'Little Brother' over pretty much any book I've read this year. Because I think it'll change lives. It's a wonderful, important book' Neil Gaiman
'Cory Doctorow's novel could hardly be more relevant, scary and eye-opening. seriously entertaining.' The Times
"SF author Doctorow (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom), coeditor of the influential blog BoingBoing, tells a believable and frightening tale of a near-future San Francisco, victimized first by terrorists and then by an out-of-control Department of Homeland Security determined to turn the city into a virtual police state....Filled with sharp dialogue and detailed descriptions of how to counteract gait-recognition cameras, arphids (radio frequency ID tags), wireless Internet tracers and other surveillance devices, this work makes its admittedly didactic point within a tautly crafted fictional framework. Ages 13-up." Publishers Weekly
'An entertaining thriller and a thoughful polemic on Internet-era civil rights. a terrific read' New York Times '
"Marcus believes it is another typical day in his life as a student at Cesar Chavez High School in San Francisco: outsmarting the school's computer systems; stumping the gait-recognition security cameras; evading the class bully by corrupting his cell phone with thousands of spam text messages; and escaping the confines of his classes to play Harajuku Fun Madness, an Alternate Reality Game. The game turns deadly when Marcus and his friends are caught up in the chaos of a terrorist attack, taken prisoner by the Department of Homeland Security, and interrogated for days. When he is finally released, he finds his city has been taken over by security, with everyone being monitored for suspicious activity. Determined to hold on to his civil liberties and fight back against the DHS, Marcus develops an underground Internet, and soon XNetters everywhere are uniting to protest the government's invasive spying on anyone whose ideology differs from theirs. What freedoms are people willing to sacrifice in exchange for the elusive feeling of "being safe"? While this futuristic techno-thriller explores timely and critically important themes such as privacy, the Bill of Rights, the role of government, and the imperfect nature of security systems, at its heart it is a classic adventure story about the power of the people to challenge authority and one teen's refusal to give up his rights without a fight. A sure hit with technophiles and politically-aware teens as well as those who question authority (which means almost all teens), this smartly written novel has the potential to launch powerful classroom discussions and change the way young people think about government. It should motivate all readersto take a more active role in voting and governmental accountability, while also seriously analyzing their own views about civil liberties" Keri Collins Lewis, Children's Literature
Author Biography
Cory Doctorow is co-editor of BoingBoing.net and the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He writes columns for Make, Information Week, the Guardian online and Locus. He has won the Locus Award for his fiction three times, been nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula, won the Campbell Award and was named one of the internet's top 25 influencers by Forbes magazine and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He hopes you'll use technology to change the world.
