Little Brother

The latest book from Canadian super sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow called Little Brother is marketed as a young adult novel but that shouldn't deter you from picking it up. Read this post by Cory for a more detailed explanation of why it ended up in the YA section.

The novel follows a group of teenagers in San Francisco after a terrorist attack. The government responds to the attack in a draconian manner and civil liberties are trampled upon. This doesn't sit well with kids and they fight back in the only way they know how, buy using the technologies and social engineering that kids are oh so familiar with these days.

I really did love this book and so did my friend Alexandre based on his review. It is a very near future allegorical romp which contains plausible technologies. As a geek nothing drives me crazier than those deus ex machina moments you see in books and movies where they pull out some crap that doesn't even exist. One of the things I love most about Cory's writing is that he's able to avoid this contrivances. In fact the technology is so plausible in the book there is a rss feed on instructables.

Anyway as always Cory has released his book under the creative commons license and you can download it from the books website.