I was at a bar with some booksellers, engaging in drunken bookseller
gossip over expensive whiskies and cheap beer, and one of them said I
had to read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. “It’s the most
important book to come out this year,” he said. I was skeptical.
Booksellers hyperbolize a lot—plus, Little Brother is
Doctorow’s first book of young-adult fiction. “I don’t read young-adult
fiction,” I said. He called me a snob and a jackass. Things
devolved into a fight.
The trajectory of my young reading life completely overshot
young-adult novels. I don’t have much use for them. America feels
otherwise. The young-adult market is expanding exponentially, and
those numbers don’t just include teenagers; a growing segment of the
adult reading population now reads young-adult novels.
I finally agreed to read the book because Doctorow is always
surprising. He has written great science-fiction novels (Down and
Out in the Magic Kingdom) and amazing experimental failures (Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, whose main
character is the spawn of a washing machine and a mountain). Doctorow
is perhaps most famous for his aversion to copyright; almost all of his
work is available for free in e-book form under Creative Commons:
Basically, you can legally do anything you want with
them—download, reedit, rewrite—as long as you don’t profit.
Little Brother is an extension of that computer-friendly,
fuck-the-man attitude.
Little Brother is the story of Marcus, a 17-year-old hacker
who gets secretly arrested by Homeland Security. In true
young-adult-novel fashion, Marcus and his friends fight back against
the theft of their freedoms.
Doctorow’s prose is light and explanatory, and it’s the explanations
that really make the book important: Hidden inside Little
Brother is a manual for civil disobedience. It has useful
advice for what to do when detained by authorities; information about
methods the government employs to track its own citizens; and actual,
working tips on how to modify technology to maintain your anonymity.
With a copy of the book and Google, it’s possible for an inspired
reader to scan his surroundings for miniature cameras, free his
computer from spyware, and set up anonymous internet identities.
It’s amazing that, in wave after wave of political books whining
about the loss of civil liberties, none provide useful information
on fighting back. Little Brother should be given to teenagers
(and quite a few adults) everywhere. 
Cory Doctorow reads Sat May 17, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7:30
pm; and Tues May 20, Ravenna Third Place Books, 7 pm. Both readings are
free.