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Book jacket to Little Brother

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January 2009

Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow

"We have enough on you now to put you away for a very long time, Marcus. Your possession of these articles --" she gestured at all my little gizmos -- "and the data we recovered from your phone and memory sticks, as well as the subversive material we'd no doubt find if we raided your house and took your computer. It's enough to put you away until you're an old man. Do you understand that?"

I didn't believe it for a second. There's no way a judge would say that all this stuff constituted any kind of real crime. It was free speech, it was technological tinkering. It wasn't a crime.

But who said that these people would ever put me in front of a judge.

"We know where you live, we know who your friends are. We know how you operate and how you think."

It dawned on me then. They were about to let me go. The room seemed to brighten. I heard myself breathing, short little breaths.

"We just want to know one thing: what was the delivery mechanism for the bombs on the bridge?"

I stopped breathing. The room darkened again.

"What?"

Techno-geek Marcus Yallow (aka "w1n5t0n") is a San Francisco high school student in the not-too-distant future. He plays online games with his friends, he builds his own laptops and gadgets, and he thinks of new ways to confuse the cameras and gait sensors which monitor all of the students at his school. However, it's a serious case of "wrong place at the wrong time" when Marcus and his friends are wrongly apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of a terrorist attack. After a terrifying experience in a secret government prison, Marcus is released only to find that his worlds, both physical and virtual, are now under constant surveillance, and that every citizen is now being treated as a potential terrorist. Just how much of their privacy will the population give up to feel secure? Can Marcus and his friends reclaim technology in order to expose the truth and bring down a government gone out-of-control? Should they even try? This is an exciting techno-thriller you just can't miss!

This synopsis was written by a San José Public Library librarian.

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This page last updated January 09, 2009 by the Web Team