Cory Doctorow's techno-thriller "Little Brother" is a humdinger. Frighteningly smart and engaging. What's scary is how close it comes to plausible. Doctorow spins his tale from today's politically h4wt (that's "hot" in hacker talk) climate of sweeping arrests and clandestine torture. He portrays a police state that springs up after a terrorist attack in San Francisco.
Doctorow opens with bombings of the Bay Bridge and the BART tunnel . Thousands perish, and individual rights sink. In the chaos, Marcus Yallow, a 17-year-old high school senior, and several friends are arrested by out-of-control officers from the Department of Homeland Security. They hood the teens and take them to a secret site for interrogation.
Marcus, a.k.a. "w1n5st0n" (pronounced Winston), narrates his story. He's a precocious video gamer who's already circumvented his school's surveillance. When he's released after several days, he keeps mum about the arrest because he's sure no one will believe him. But he's acutely aware that his rights have been trampled, and he's concerned about his best friend, Darryl, who's still incarcerated.
Marcus decides his only path is digital disobedience. He builds a web of trust with teens who join in the encrypting subterfuge and cripple security systems with false positives. Mixed in with his honorably devious work are Marcus' parents, friendships and a little romance on the run.
Doctorow's fast-paced story will keep the pages flying. Even its diversions into the math of probability and the history of hippies are curiously tangent to the action. George Orwell would be proud of this descendant of his Big Brother in "Nineteen Eighty-Four."
Not to be missed are the back-of-the-book essays by Bruce Schneier, a real security technologist, and Andrew "bunnie" Huang, an Xbox hacker who explains how complicated systems are deliciously challenging to hackers. Both essays and the author's annotated bibliography are worth the price of the book.
***
"Little Brother" Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen, $17.95, 384 pages, ages 12 and up)
Judy Green can be reached at jgreen@sacbee.com.
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