Little Brother
139 Installments—Entirely free
(Preview)
Members' Rating:
from 65 Ratings and 21 Reviews
Tags: Contemporary, Novel, Science Fiction, Technology
ISBN:0765319853
"A scarily realistic adventure about how homeland security technology could be abused to wrongfully imprison innocent Americans. A teenage hacker-turned-hero pits himself against the government to fight for his basic freedoms." (Bunnie Huang)
Praise for Little Brother
"A rousing tale of techno-geek rebellion, as necessary and dangerous as file sharing, free speech, and bottled water on a plane."
– Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies and Extras
"I can talk about Little Brother in terms of its bravura political speculation or its brilliant uses of technology -- each of which make this book a must-read -- but, at the end of it all, I'm haunted by the universality of Marcus's rite-of-passage and struggle, an experience any teen today is going to grasp: the moment when you choose what your life will mean and how to achieve it."
– Steven C Gould, author of Jumper and Reflex
"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."
– Neil Gaiman, author of Anansi Boys
"Little Brother is a scarily realistic adventure about how homeland security technology could be abused to wrongfully imprison innocent Americans. A teenage hacker-turned-hero pits himself against the government to fight for his basic freedoms. This book is action-packed with tales of courage, technology, and demonstrations of digital disobedience as the technophile's civil protest."
– Bunnie Huang, author of Hacking the Xbox
"Cory Doctorow is a fast and furious storyteller who gets all the details of alternate reality gaming right, while offering a startling, new vision of how these games might play out in the high-stakes context of a terrorist attack. Little Brother is a brilliant novel with a bold argument: hackers and gamers might just be our country's best hope for the future."
– Jane McGonical, Designer, I Love Bees
"The right book at the right time from the right author -- and, not entirely coincidentally, Cory Doctorow's best novel yet."
– John Scalzi, author of Old Man's War
"It's about growing up in the near future where things have kept going on the way they've been going, and it's about hacking as a habit of mind, but mostly it's about growing up and changing and looking at the world and asking what you can do about that. The teenage voice is pitch-perfect. I couldn't put it down, and I loved it."
– Jo Walton, author of Farthing
"A worthy younger sibling to Orwell's 1984, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother is lively, precocious, and most importantly, a little scary."
– Brian K Vaughn, author of Y: The Last Man
"Little Brother sounds an optimistic warning. It extrapolates from current events to remind us of the ever-growing threats to liberty. But it also notes that liberty ultimately resides in our individual attitudes and actions. In our increasingly authoritarian world, I especially hope that teenagers and young adults will read it -- and then persuade their peers, parents and teachers to follow suit."
– Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media
Extended Copyright Information
Copyright 2008 by Cory Doctorow.
This work, Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow, is distributed under the following Creative Commons License: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Originally published by Tor Books.
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About the Author
Born in 1971 to a Canadian family whose values included political activism, Cory Doctorow devoted much of his youth to activist and social justice causes. After leaving college without a degree, he went on to serve pivotal roles in the field of copyright in the electronic and internet age. In 2003, he published his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which was greeted with much success from the science fiction community. A sought-after lecturer, Doctorow recently held the inaugural Fulbright Chair in Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. He has since published other works, among them a short-story collection entitled A Place So Foreign and Eight More, and a novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
Back to topOpening Lines (Experimental)
Every chapter of this file has been dedicated to a different bookstore, and in each case, it's a store that I love, a store that's helped me discover books that opened my mind, a store that's helped my career along. The stores didn't pay me anything for this -- I haven't even told them about it -- ...
Back to topCopyright
Copyright 2008 by Cory Doctorow.
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
Back to topMember reviews
4/5
Reviewed by SomersetBob on Dec 26, 2009
Enjoyable Read
This story had me looking forward to each daily instalment - believeable characters, tense situations, satisfying resolution. Recommended.
5/5
Reviewed by swebco on Dec 22, 2009
How scary is this???
I am amazed. What a story and the characters are so well written. I appreciated the development of the hero, not a bad ass, not a warrior, but someone who didn't give up, and wouldn't shut up. We need more like him!!!!
4/5
Reviewed by samurailink3 on Dec 9, 2009
Good, but not great.
This book presents some very current fears about technology and how it will be used in the future. The book is good, but the focus on teen-love throws off the pacing quite a bit.
5/5
Reviewed by waxmoon on Dec 8, 2009
Loved it!
Loved it!
5/5
Reviewed by benaud on Nov 4, 2009
Excellent Book
Really enjoyed it.
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Ratings for 'Little Brother' by Doctorow, Cory
| adnam | ![]() | 2009-07-25 | |
| albert | ![]() | 2009-03-22 | |
| augapfel | ![]() | Read review | 2009-02-04 |
| Belial007 | ![]() | 2009-10-06 | |
| benaud | ![]() | Read review | 2009-11-04 |
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| boookywooky | ![]() | 2009-08-20 | |
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| bossmare | ![]() | Read review | 2008-11-26 |
| carlbruce1979 | ![]() | 2009-12-19 | |
| cee2 | ![]() | Read review | 2008-11-18 |
| cresswga | ![]() | 2009-03-09 | |
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| davosmith | ![]() | 2009-03-25 | |
| Dinosaur | ![]() | Read review | 2009-01-14 |
| drgnlady34 | ![]() | 2009-08-27 | |
| dsmerf214 | ![]() | 2008-10-01 | |
| eldatari | ![]() | 2010-01-27 | |
| ElliesMom | ![]() | 2009-03-27 | |
| Emily380 | ![]() | 2009-02-11 | |
| EmmaLouise | ![]() | 2009-01-16 | |
| felynbelarra | ![]() | 2008-11-04 | |
| fusion8 | ![]() | 2009-02-08 |
Little Brother
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