Little Brother

Little brother by Cory Doctorow is unlike any other novel I have ever read, so why did it feel so familiar to me? I'm not sure I have ever read a fictional novel that included not one, but two afterwards and a bibliography. I loved that.

My concern in starting this novel was that I would not be able to A) follow the techno-babble for lack of a better word. I don't tweet, I'm not on Instagram, I don't blog or snap chat, and I barely touched my facebook account in years. I lack the basic language to be able to follow a tech heavy novel using todays jargon. B) I'm too old to apreciate a novel about teenage hackers fighting "the man"( look I'm showing my age by using "The man"!) in today's society. Hell, i was almost too old to appreciate the movies "Hackers" when it came out in 1995. I'm still gun shy over that train wreck of a novel Feed by Mira Grant. I just can't shake the feeling that my age was part of the reason I could not finish that novel, and not just because it was a sucky novel.

To my complete and utter relief and pleasure Mr. Doctorow has written a novel that is entertaining for a computer novice like me. I am over 25 (by several years) so I am not to be trusted and am only basically computer literate. I can do basic computer operations and back in the early 90's I took several computer science courses which are no longer relevant. But thats ok. The Author gave just enough information about what his technoterms meant that I was able to follow the story but did not bog it down with too much. And the story was good.

I think the novel felt familer to me because it comes from a long history of dystopian novels, not of the The Hunger Games, orDivergent variety which are good and fill a slot. No this novel reminded me more of 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale. Good company to be in, in my opinion.

There is a strong Libertarian flavor to this novel, but it is not preachy. This is going to appeal to young and old alike. That is probably why Little Brother was nominated for a 2008 Nebula, 2009 Hugo and Locus YA awards and won a 2009 Campbell and Prometheus. Clearly I was not the only reader entranced by this novel.

And because of this novel my next non-fiction work is Alan Turing: The Enigma.

4.5 of 5 stars