Little Brother | CBC Books - Action News
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Little Brother

Cory Doctorow's young adult novel is about a teen who is imprisoned by the government after hacking into his high school's surveillance systems.

Cory Doctorow

Marcus, a.k.a. "W1n5t0n," is a 17-year-old high school student who's cracked the networked world at least, the world of his high school's intrusive and clumsy surveillance systems. But when he and his friends find themselves struggling in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack, Marcus is no longer the master of his domain. Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his friends are apprehended, imprisoned and tortured by the Department of Homeland Security. When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus finds that his city of San Francisco has transformed into a police state. Everyone is a potential terrorist, a potential suspect. Marcus knows the truth and realizes that the only way to save his world is to take it down himself.

Little Brother is for readers ages 13 and up.

Read an excerpt | Author interviews

From the book

"W1n5t0n," he said, spelling it out again. He gave me a hairy eyeball and waited for me to wilt. Of course it was my handle, and had been for years. It was the identity I used when I was posting on message boards where I was making my contributions to the field of applied security research. You know, like sneaking out of school and disabling the minder-tracer on my phone. But he didn't know that this was my handle. Only a small number of people did, and I trusted them all to the end of the earth.


From Little Brother by Cory Doctorow 2008. Published by Tor Books.

Author interviews

Science fiction author, journalist, and all around futurist Cory Doctorow believes the recent copyright battles are the opening salvo of a larger war against general computers.