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Little Brother #2
Homeland
In Cory Doctorow's wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco―an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state.
A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus's hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It's incendiary stuff―and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.
Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him―but he can't admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He's surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can't even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He's not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he's gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they're used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want.
A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus's hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It's incendiary stuff―and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.
Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him―but he can't admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He's surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can't even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He's not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he's gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they're used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want.
396 pages, Hardcover
First published February 5, 2013
About the author
Cory Doctorow
218 books5,323 followersCory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and
Little Brother
and novels for adults like
Rapture Of The Nerds
and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,025 reviews
November 7, 2015
So very, very, good. But not for the usual reasons I call book "good".
This book will make you want to do something, even if its just exploring the world of privacy, encryption, and the technologies that strengthen them (and weaken them). It might make you want to go out and join and Occupy protest. Or get involved in campaigning for an independent political candidate. It might make you consider starting to use TrueCrypt to protect your personal data. It might make you finally get around to figuring out that whole Tor thing, and how the darknet works. Or virtual machines, anonymyzing proxies, or 3D printing. Or it might just help you be more sensitive to future issues that center around privacy, civil liberties, money in elections, or simply the difference between right and wrong.
That's quite a lot for something that's nominally a "young adult" novel. But that's what Cory does. And he's very, very good at it.
Read this book, and then, as Jacob Applebaum says in the afterword, give it to the person that needs it most.
This book will make you want to do something, even if its just exploring the world of privacy, encryption, and the technologies that strengthen them (and weaken them). It might make you want to go out and join and Occupy protest. Or get involved in campaigning for an independent political candidate. It might make you consider starting to use TrueCrypt to protect your personal data. It might make you finally get around to figuring out that whole Tor thing, and how the darknet works. Or virtual machines, anonymyzing proxies, or 3D printing. Or it might just help you be more sensitive to future issues that center around privacy, civil liberties, money in elections, or simply the difference between right and wrong.
That's quite a lot for something that's nominally a "young adult" novel. But that's what Cory does. And he's very, very good at it.
Read this book, and then, as Jacob Applebaum says in the afterword, give it to the person that needs it most.
March 18, 2013
Well crap. Once again Doctorow paints a pretty grim and believable picture of what happens when we allow our rights to privacy, autonomy and freedom of expression to be circumscribed in the name of "safety" and "protection."
The most disturbing thing about the potential of this tale to become reality, is that many of the MOST disturbing plot aspects of the novel have already occurred, and even as the perpetrators get their hands slapped, their attorneys rewrite service agreements, that we click "accept" in the little checkbox, and say "Hello nice corporation, I COMPLETELY trust that you will not use any of my private information for nefarious purposes, nor will you turn it over to, or sell it to, any other corporation or government agency that wants it."
All the while, your phone is sending out "location and usage data" to 50 different services all the time, even if your CarrierIQ has been disabled. That's okay, they have other ways of getting what they want out of your devices.
So here I am, typing on a website that shares my personal opinion with anyone who wants to see it, any website that wants to aggregate it, I've voluntarily placed up my own personal image, stated approximately where I live, given my cellphone permission to gather more "user statistics," and now I will page over to Facebook, and G+, and use my MapMyWalk, and my GPS, and take pictures that get geotagged and upload them to Flickr...
We are doing it to ourselves, and even when we know, do we plan to stop?
This short story is relevant and worth reading: The Perfect Match, by Ken Liu
The most disturbing thing about the potential of this tale to become reality, is that many of the MOST disturbing plot aspects of the novel have already occurred, and even as the perpetrators get their hands slapped, their attorneys rewrite service agreements, that we click "accept" in the little checkbox, and say "Hello nice corporation, I COMPLETELY trust that you will not use any of my private information for nefarious purposes, nor will you turn it over to, or sell it to, any other corporation or government agency that wants it."
All the while, your phone is sending out "location and usage data" to 50 different services all the time, even if your CarrierIQ has been disabled. That's okay, they have other ways of getting what they want out of your devices.
So here I am, typing on a website that shares my personal opinion with anyone who wants to see it, any website that wants to aggregate it, I've voluntarily placed up my own personal image, stated approximately where I live, given my cellphone permission to gather more "user statistics," and now I will page over to Facebook, and G+, and use my MapMyWalk, and my GPS, and take pictures that get geotagged and upload them to Flickr...
We are doing it to ourselves, and even when we know, do we plan to stop?
This short story is relevant and worth reading: The Perfect Match, by Ken Liu
December 6, 2019
Homeland was a book I hadn't really planned to read as part of my "finish up my unfinished series" project for the year. I enjoyed Little Brother, but I wasn't itching to see where the story went from there. At the last minute, I decided to add it to the list, and now that I've finished it, I can say that I made the wrong decision. I should have gone with my first instinct and left it well enough alone.
That's not to say that the book is bad; it's not. It's actually quite readable, compelling, and intriguing. The problem is that it's padded with a bunch of unnecessary detail because it's all about the things that Cory Doctorow writes about on Boing Boing. It's about Burning Man and cold-brewed coffee and 3D printing and third-party political candidates and drones and darknet and so on and whatever and yadda yadda. These aren't even things that are mentioned in passing, either; if you ever get a hankering to try cold-brewed coffee (and don't think that Doctorow doesn't extol how awesome and good and better-than-yours this coffee is, because he does, for about two pages), just open this book to page 56. He doesn't write out a recipe, but he tells you how to make it, in insane, ridiculous detail, detail that doesn't belong in a novel.
In fact, here are things you will learn about, and how long you will have to endure the details, while reading this book:
-Secure passwords (four paragraphs)
-Random numbers (four pages, namely because at one point he quotes pi for 1000 places)
-Cloud server computing (three pages)
-Astroturfing (fake grassroots campaigns) and sock puppet accounts (two pages)
-Beating lie detectors by clenching your asshole (two very uncomfortable pages)
If Doctorow had cut all that detail, the book might be about 250 pages long. As it stands, the book is about twice that length.
The characters and plot take second place to all these details, and Doctorow doesn't really bother to hide that fact. There's no real development of the characters, and aside from a handful of the main characters, everyone is a two-dimensional shell that's there to serve as a reason for an info-dump, or to move along what little plot there is. Instead, the tone of the whole novel was ingratiating. That should have come as no surprise to me, since Doctorow is usually in full-on self-promotion mode, and the ideals and philosophies he discusses in this novel are his own.
There are still some aspects of the novel that grated on me, outside of all that detail. Doctorow has a habit if having his characters talk in detail to each other about things that both of them already know about. At one point, a character asks another one if he's read a book, to which he responds that not only did he read it, but he wrote a paper about it in AP English (because that's the sort of characters there are in this book). So the other character then goes into a whole lot of detail about the book, prefacing it with "Then you'll remember" so the author can pretend that he hasn't just written dialogue that has no place in the scene. Sure, he wants to convey information to the reader that they may not have, but there were other, better ways to do that.
This kind of thing peppered Little Brother, too, but it didn't bother me as much then as it does now. I think it's partly because the info-dumps were a service to that story. That was a book about terrorism, security, privacy, and government, so getting a bunch of information about all of those things was necessary to keep the reader engaged in the story. With Homeland, everything just seems sort of random. There was no real reason to go into so much detail about Burning Man, or to have the main character meet a bunch of friends of Doctorow's within the narrative. It was just a moment where Doctorow could look smug and make himself look important because he knew enough about these people to include them in their novel. I'm surprised that Randall Munroe didn't get name-checked in the book, too.
I also noticed that there were a ton of "have got"s and "has got"s all over the place in this book. I cringe inside when I hear that phrase, since "I have" conveys the same information as "I've got," with the added bonus of it being grammatically correct (see also: "Where are you at?"). When I see it in books, it bothers me even more. I can accept it when the narrator or character is talking in a conversational style, but when you have a poised, professional, severe character who keeps using that phrase, it just winds up being completely unbelievable.
The ending was disappointing, too, because it just happened, through no effort on the main character's part. What resolution there was occurred off-screen, making much of the effort of getting to that point wasted. Doctorow will show us the details that involve public Maker spaces, but not what happens to the primary antagonist?
I'll admit that most of what I dislike about this novel is the little pieces, but at the same time, the book serves as the kind of propaganda that Atlas Shrugged was, and continues to be. Even being on the side of the issues discussed in this book did little to prevent me from being annoyed at the details. The bigger picture is a decent story, it's just ruined by Doctorow being Doctorow. It's one thing to post and discuss this kind of thing on a blog, but when you're writing a story, you need to know when to draw that line and put the focus back on the story. Unfortunately, Doctorow (and, more egregiously, his editor) doesn't know how to do that.
That's not to say that the book is bad; it's not. It's actually quite readable, compelling, and intriguing. The problem is that it's padded with a bunch of unnecessary detail because it's all about the things that Cory Doctorow writes about on Boing Boing. It's about Burning Man and cold-brewed coffee and 3D printing and third-party political candidates and drones and darknet and so on and whatever and yadda yadda. These aren't even things that are mentioned in passing, either; if you ever get a hankering to try cold-brewed coffee (and don't think that Doctorow doesn't extol how awesome and good and better-than-yours this coffee is, because he does, for about two pages), just open this book to page 56. He doesn't write out a recipe, but he tells you how to make it, in insane, ridiculous detail, detail that doesn't belong in a novel.
In fact, here are things you will learn about, and how long you will have to endure the details, while reading this book:
-Secure passwords (four paragraphs)
-Random numbers (four pages, namely because at one point he quotes pi for 1000 places)
-Cloud server computing (three pages)
-Astroturfing (fake grassroots campaigns) and sock puppet accounts (two pages)
-Beating lie detectors by clenching your asshole (two very uncomfortable pages)
If Doctorow had cut all that detail, the book might be about 250 pages long. As it stands, the book is about twice that length.
The characters and plot take second place to all these details, and Doctorow doesn't really bother to hide that fact. There's no real development of the characters, and aside from a handful of the main characters, everyone is a two-dimensional shell that's there to serve as a reason for an info-dump, or to move along what little plot there is. Instead, the tone of the whole novel was ingratiating. That should have come as no surprise to me, since Doctorow is usually in full-on self-promotion mode, and the ideals and philosophies he discusses in this novel are his own.
There are still some aspects of the novel that grated on me, outside of all that detail. Doctorow has a habit if having his characters talk in detail to each other about things that both of them already know about. At one point, a character asks another one if he's read a book, to which he responds that not only did he read it, but he wrote a paper about it in AP English (because that's the sort of characters there are in this book). So the other character then goes into a whole lot of detail about the book, prefacing it with "Then you'll remember" so the author can pretend that he hasn't just written dialogue that has no place in the scene. Sure, he wants to convey information to the reader that they may not have, but there were other, better ways to do that.
This kind of thing peppered Little Brother, too, but it didn't bother me as much then as it does now. I think it's partly because the info-dumps were a service to that story. That was a book about terrorism, security, privacy, and government, so getting a bunch of information about all of those things was necessary to keep the reader engaged in the story. With Homeland, everything just seems sort of random. There was no real reason to go into so much detail about Burning Man, or to have the main character meet a bunch of friends of Doctorow's within the narrative. It was just a moment where Doctorow could look smug and make himself look important because he knew enough about these people to include them in their novel. I'm surprised that Randall Munroe didn't get name-checked in the book, too.
I also noticed that there were a ton of "have got"s and "has got"s all over the place in this book. I cringe inside when I hear that phrase, since "I have" conveys the same information as "I've got," with the added bonus of it being grammatically correct (see also: "Where are you at?"). When I see it in books, it bothers me even more. I can accept it when the narrator or character is talking in a conversational style, but when you have a poised, professional, severe character who keeps using that phrase, it just winds up being completely unbelievable.
The ending was disappointing, too, because it just happened, through no effort on the main character's part. What resolution there was occurred off-screen, making much of the effort of getting to that point wasted. Doctorow will show us the details that involve public Maker spaces, but not what happens to the primary antagonist?
I'll admit that most of what I dislike about this novel is the little pieces, but at the same time, the book serves as the kind of propaganda that Atlas Shrugged was, and continues to be. Even being on the side of the issues discussed in this book did little to prevent me from being annoyed at the details. The bigger picture is a decent story, it's just ruined by Doctorow being Doctorow. It's one thing to post and discuss this kind of thing on a blog, but when you're writing a story, you need to know when to draw that line and put the focus back on the story. Unfortunately, Doctorow (and, more egregiously, his editor) doesn't know how to do that.
March 7, 2013
The book is nice, same basic plot as its predecessor - Little Brother. But it is less scary and less original - exactly because it has a similar plot. It also lacks a climax at the end. I am not the guy that wants every book to end like some western movie with the hero riding toward the sunset with the beautiful girl, but I still want the story to have a real end. I suspect the reason it lacks a climax is intentional, because the story is supposed to be motivational and as a result of this "real", and not like a movie/book plot.
The other thing that bugs me about this book is the technology. For someone who talks about paranoia, the author repeats some ideas about anonymity, that are like web browsers 101 or article in wikipedia in simple English. The all powerful government with basically endless supply of money is supposed to go through available to the public encryption schemes like hot knife through butter. If you think that a three letter agency can be stopped just by downloading free software, well, let us just say you are not exactly paranoid. Tor for example is something, that was developed by the military and then they abandoned it. Just like that? The military gave the whistle blowers a key instrument to be used when exposing secrets anonymously? Yeah, right! :) I think a good read about Tor is this: http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=624
That's the thing about paranoia. It is never enough. If you are paranoid and cynical enough, you have toexpect honeypots and other dirty tricks. Usually the easiest way to do something that the authorities don't want you to do is already covered. So all this 4chan and tor and stuff is probably full of agents and traps and trojan horses. So if you want to take this book as a motivation to do some of the stuff described in it, then I think the instruments described in it are at least insufficient.
On the positive site the book has a higher goal - to persuade the reader that he/she has to fight for his/her digital and "analog" rights and that he/she shouldn't be stopped by the thought that he/she is just a really small gear in the big System and is unable to change anything. And other than my objection about offering Tor as some panacea, the book is written very well from technological point of view and represents issues, technologies and events that are very real and present.
The other thing that bugs me about this book is the technology. For someone who talks about paranoia, the author repeats some ideas about anonymity, that are like web browsers 101 or article in wikipedia in simple English. The all powerful government with basically endless supply of money is supposed to go through available to the public encryption schemes like hot knife through butter. If you think that a three letter agency can be stopped just by downloading free software, well, let us just say you are not exactly paranoid. Tor for example is something, that was developed by the military and then they abandoned it. Just like that? The military gave the whistle blowers a key instrument to be used when exposing secrets anonymously? Yeah, right! :) I think a good read about Tor is this: http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=624
That's the thing about paranoia. It is never enough. If you are paranoid and cynical enough, you have toexpect honeypots and other dirty tricks. Usually the easiest way to do something that the authorities don't want you to do is already covered. So all this 4chan and tor and stuff is probably full of agents and traps and trojan horses. So if you want to take this book as a motivation to do some of the stuff described in it, then I think the instruments described in it are at least insufficient.
On the positive site the book has a higher goal - to persuade the reader that he/she has to fight for his/her digital and "analog" rights and that he/she shouldn't be stopped by the thought that he/she is just a really small gear in the big System and is unable to change anything. And other than my objection about offering Tor as some panacea, the book is written very well from technological point of view and represents issues, technologies and events that are very real and present.
March 5, 2013
This sequel to "Little Brother" doesn't quite live up to its predecessor. At the end of LB, Marcus has gone from a somewhat cocky teen rebel to a wiser, scarred near-adult. He learns; he grows; he evolves. In contrast, Marcus ends Homeland in basically the same shape he starts in. It's a shame, because the writing in both books is good, if a bit tech-y in places.
In any event, the book begins with Marcus and his girlfriend Ange having a great time at Burning Man. They run into Masha, a former baddie in LB, who gives them a USB stick with a complete and very damaging dossier on "Severe Haircut Lady," the Big Bad from LB. She wants Marcus to leak it, Wikileaks-style, in hopes that the info will bring down the clandestine Homeland Security apparatus.
Then Masha disappears, and Marcus has a dilemma--how to release the info without drawing the attention of the baddies. In the meantime, he's found a dream job as a webmaster for an up-and-coming politician. The rest of the book covers his attempts to get the info out without losing his head, his friends, or his job.
I'll keep this one, because I do like the characters, it's a quick read, and the writing is good. I had the pleasure of hearing Cory Doctorow talk about Homeland on his recent tour, and I don't think we've heard the last of Marcus. I just hope that in the next one, Marcus continues to evolve, and the tension/stakes are higher.
In any event, the book begins with Marcus and his girlfriend Ange having a great time at Burning Man. They run into Masha, a former baddie in LB, who gives them a USB stick with a complete and very damaging dossier on "Severe Haircut Lady," the Big Bad from LB. She wants Marcus to leak it, Wikileaks-style, in hopes that the info will bring down the clandestine Homeland Security apparatus.
Then Masha disappears, and Marcus has a dilemma--how to release the info without drawing the attention of the baddies. In the meantime, he's found a dream job as a webmaster for an up-and-coming politician. The rest of the book covers his attempts to get the info out without losing his head, his friends, or his job.
I'll keep this one, because I do like the characters, it's a quick read, and the writing is good. I had the pleasure of hearing Cory Doctorow talk about Homeland on his recent tour, and I don't think we've heard the last of Marcus. I just hope that in the next one, Marcus continues to evolve, and the tension/stakes are higher.
February 27, 2013
I should never start a Doctorow book in the evening because I will surely be up all night alternately reading and pacing and Googling and despairing and hoping.
This sequel to Little Brother is splendid. The technology bits make me frightened and determined to learn more. The story is gripping, the people (with the possible exception of Carrie because I just can't believe in that much evil- for my own tenuous sanity, I mean) are real and wonderful. The quiet defeat of Marcus' parents is heartbreakingly believable. The late-adolescent love stories are a welcome diversion throughout the narrative.
Reading Doctorow now is, for me, a lot like what reading Heinlein was back in the day; there's plenty of preaching but since I'm already sitting in the choir loft, I'm happy to hear it. And I holler AMEN at every opportunity.
Read this one, then give it to all the teenagers you know.
This sequel to Little Brother is splendid. The technology bits make me frightened and determined to learn more. The story is gripping, the people (with the possible exception of Carrie because I just can't believe in that much evil- for my own tenuous sanity, I mean) are real and wonderful. The quiet defeat of Marcus' parents is heartbreakingly believable. The late-adolescent love stories are a welcome diversion throughout the narrative.
Reading Doctorow now is, for me, a lot like what reading Heinlein was back in the day; there's plenty of preaching but since I'm already sitting in the choir loft, I'm happy to hear it. And I holler AMEN at every opportunity.
Read this one, then give it to all the teenagers you know.
September 21, 2013
Homeland
I was very excited to read this and I was well aware that I would compare this to Little Brother constantly. Little Brother blew me away and any novel so closely related to it in scope and theme would have a hard time passing scrutiny.
The first chapter didn’t quite pull me in. I understood that it was supposed to set the tone, that the freedom of the Burning Man festival was intended as a stark contrast to the oppressiveness and bleakness of the ‘real world’ waiting back of Chicago. I found it remarkable that all the positive aspects of Burning Man were brought out in opposition to everyday life: the absence of surveillance, commercial transactions etc. Burning Man acted as a counterpoint and, for me, added to the sense of oppression and captivity and the constraints exercised by society waiting on the return to ‘civilisation’. The need to point out how great it is that something is absent in a confined space and time only emphasises how fucked-up reality really is. Of course, the happy, carefree, and peaceful setting of the first chapter also served to make the invasion of outside forces, intent on disrupting the harmonic atmosphere of this seeming paradise, even more shocking.
Even though surveillance and control, and the abuse of power were ever-present in the portrayal of the school system in Little Brother, the kid’s attempts to circumvent the measures put into effect by the school board added a playfulness that came to an abrupt end with the bombing. It’s very much the same formula in Homeland. While similar to the narrative strategies employed in Homeland, Little Brother’s opening chapter worked better for me. I’m pretty sure that my own claustrophobic nature and dislike of large groups of people and extreme heat evoked a personal reaction contrary to the one intended for the Burning Man setting.
The pacing of Homeland is near perfect. There are episodes of relative calm that ease the readers into the story but always keep them in suspense of the dreadful things that might happen next to shatter the serene and joyful atmosphere. And when these awful things do happen (as they inevitably will, but in a different way than expected), you sit there clutching the book, holding your breath, and fervently hoping the protagonists will find a way to prevail and face down their opponents. I’m pretty sure that other reviewers will criticise the protagonist’s vast knowledge of almost everything and his tendency to explain things to his readers in detail. I didn’t mind that at all. As in Little Brother, the story is told from the POV of Marcus Yallow who, by now, has finished school and quit college because of financial difficulties and is looking for work in a very unstable economic situation. The reader follows Marcus’ reasoning and emotional and logical reactions. Marcus explains a lot of technical and scientific know-how, which was quite fun to me, whether I was already familiar with what he talked about or not. I admit that quite a bit just washed over me, but my paranoia was definitely fuelled again, so much so that I had to resist the urge to remove batteries from mobile phones and laptops and to cut the internet wires. Cory Doctorow is occasionally being accused of being overly didactic but I really cannot say that I share the sentiment. Since I’m usually someone who shuts down as soon as I get the feeling of being preached to and really start climbing the walls when people patronise or proselytise, I’d argue that Marcus’ insights into technical and scientific, societal and political developments are delivered in an agreeable manner that asks you (politely) to consider these issues for yourself and make up your own mind about how you feel about and how you’d choose to react to them.
All in all, Homeland is an excellent book and exactly what I was craving at the time I read it The ending was hinting at the possibility of a third book, which I would really like to see a lot (as long as Masha does not turn into a competing love interest). I’m wavering between a four and five star rating … what the heck, it’s been too long since I handed out five stars. I enjoyed reading Homeland very much and that is worth 5*.
I was very excited to read this and I was well aware that I would compare this to Little Brother constantly. Little Brother blew me away and any novel so closely related to it in scope and theme would have a hard time passing scrutiny.
The first chapter didn’t quite pull me in. I understood that it was supposed to set the tone, that the freedom of the Burning Man festival was intended as a stark contrast to the oppressiveness and bleakness of the ‘real world’ waiting back of Chicago. I found it remarkable that all the positive aspects of Burning Man were brought out in opposition to everyday life: the absence of surveillance, commercial transactions etc. Burning Man acted as a counterpoint and, for me, added to the sense of oppression and captivity and the constraints exercised by society waiting on the return to ‘civilisation’. The need to point out how great it is that something is absent in a confined space and time only emphasises how fucked-up reality really is. Of course, the happy, carefree, and peaceful setting of the first chapter also served to make the invasion of outside forces, intent on disrupting the harmonic atmosphere of this seeming paradise, even more shocking.
Even though surveillance and control, and the abuse of power were ever-present in the portrayal of the school system in Little Brother, the kid’s attempts to circumvent the measures put into effect by the school board added a playfulness that came to an abrupt end with the bombing. It’s very much the same formula in Homeland. While similar to the narrative strategies employed in Homeland, Little Brother’s opening chapter worked better for me. I’m pretty sure that my own claustrophobic nature and dislike of large groups of people and extreme heat evoked a personal reaction contrary to the one intended for the Burning Man setting.
The pacing of Homeland is near perfect. There are episodes of relative calm that ease the readers into the story but always keep them in suspense of the dreadful things that might happen next to shatter the serene and joyful atmosphere. And when these awful things do happen (as they inevitably will, but in a different way than expected), you sit there clutching the book, holding your breath, and fervently hoping the protagonists will find a way to prevail and face down their opponents. I’m pretty sure that other reviewers will criticise the protagonist’s vast knowledge of almost everything and his tendency to explain things to his readers in detail. I didn’t mind that at all. As in Little Brother, the story is told from the POV of Marcus Yallow who, by now, has finished school and quit college because of financial difficulties and is looking for work in a very unstable economic situation. The reader follows Marcus’ reasoning and emotional and logical reactions. Marcus explains a lot of technical and scientific know-how, which was quite fun to me, whether I was already familiar with what he talked about or not. I admit that quite a bit just washed over me, but my paranoia was definitely fuelled again, so much so that I had to resist the urge to remove batteries from mobile phones and laptops and to cut the internet wires. Cory Doctorow is occasionally being accused of being overly didactic but I really cannot say that I share the sentiment. Since I’m usually someone who shuts down as soon as I get the feeling of being preached to and really start climbing the walls when people patronise or proselytise, I’d argue that Marcus’ insights into technical and scientific, societal and political developments are delivered in an agreeable manner that asks you (politely) to consider these issues for yourself and make up your own mind about how you feel about and how you’d choose to react to them.
All in all, Homeland is an excellent book and exactly what I was craving at the time I read it The ending was hinting at the possibility of a third book, which I would really like to see a lot (as long as Masha does not turn into a competing love interest). I’m wavering between a four and five star rating … what the heck, it’s been too long since I handed out five stars. I enjoyed reading Homeland very much and that is worth 5*.
January 23, 2013
At first I refused to believe this book was a YA novel, and consequently disliked it. I cracked this open as part of a book club assignment -- I hadn't read any of Doctorow's other fiction. I knew that the first book in this series, Little Brother, had been billed as a YA novel. But isn't that just something people say these days when they're vaguely embarrassed by their novel's enthusiasm for chase scenes or wizards?
But no: this is a straight-up YA novel. It's written in the first person, it's full of exposition and straightforward descriptions of the protagonist's easily-comprehensible emotional states, and it has the kind of safe, square sense of humor that adults feel it's okay to model for kids. This isn't a genre I read much, but once I realized what I was dealing with I instantly recognized the aesthetic from the books we ask the kids to read at FLOC. Presumably there are good reasons for picking this kind of literary presentation (*so* much of the market for this age group is written this way, and kids do seem to read it). I was just sort of surprised that Doctorow is so adept at the style, I guess. I expected something a little more science-fictional!
This being a true-blue YA novel, the plot and prose probably aren't going to do much for adults. But that's okay: they're mostly here in service of the milieu that Doctorow wants to transmit to his young readers. And I have to say, it's a surprisingly inspiring one. Superficially this is about indoctrinating kids into contemporary/near-future San Francisco/hacktivist/Burner/protest culture, but it's all grounded in a commitment to personal liberty, civic-mindedness and responsibility that's downright heartwarming. Doctorow ably conveys the culture that Boing Boing catalogs on a daily basis, and convinces you that it's actually real and worth participating in.
As you might expect, he's very good on the technology -- the book convinced me to cancel my (unused) SuperNews account and register with IPredator. Things here are very-near-future -- AFAIK MSNBC isn't flying drones over protests yet, though I'm sure they soon will -- but everything is technologically possible and accurate, with some allowances for making the construction of drones and exotic laser sintering projects seem inspiringly easy. The only misstep I spotted was in the description of Hadoop as if it were Stata (and, not being a big Hadoop user, it's possible I'm the one who's turned around on that).
As you might imagine, I found the book's treatment of politics to be a bit frustrating. Through the character of Joe Noss, Doctorow implicitly endorses the idea that our politics suffers from bad people rather than bad systems, and indulges in some familiar but still irksome third party daydreaming. The book's view of money's role is consistently grounded in quid-pro-quo, the potential importance of technology relative to traditional organizing efforts is massively overstated, and (with the exception of a reasonably humanized portrait of the SFPD) the book's worldview is consistently Manichean and adversarial. All of this is probably appropriate for a book aimed at kids, but I hope it's not what Doctorow believes (the Jacob Applebaum afterword, though inspiring in its own way, is not encouraging on this score; the second afterword by Aaron Swartz is much better).
Still, I enjoyed the read and I came away feeling like I'd been at least partially, temporarily extracted from my cynical DC technology rabbit hole. Thanks for that, Cory. I'll be recommending your novels to the next budding young hacktivist I spot.
But no: this is a straight-up YA novel. It's written in the first person, it's full of exposition and straightforward descriptions of the protagonist's easily-comprehensible emotional states, and it has the kind of safe, square sense of humor that adults feel it's okay to model for kids. This isn't a genre I read much, but once I realized what I was dealing with I instantly recognized the aesthetic from the books we ask the kids to read at FLOC. Presumably there are good reasons for picking this kind of literary presentation (*so* much of the market for this age group is written this way, and kids do seem to read it). I was just sort of surprised that Doctorow is so adept at the style, I guess. I expected something a little more science-fictional!
This being a true-blue YA novel, the plot and prose probably aren't going to do much for adults. But that's okay: they're mostly here in service of the milieu that Doctorow wants to transmit to his young readers. And I have to say, it's a surprisingly inspiring one. Superficially this is about indoctrinating kids into contemporary/near-future San Francisco/hacktivist/Burner/protest culture, but it's all grounded in a commitment to personal liberty, civic-mindedness and responsibility that's downright heartwarming. Doctorow ably conveys the culture that Boing Boing catalogs on a daily basis, and convinces you that it's actually real and worth participating in.
As you might expect, he's very good on the technology -- the book convinced me to cancel my (unused) SuperNews account and register with IPredator. Things here are very-near-future -- AFAIK MSNBC isn't flying drones over protests yet, though I'm sure they soon will -- but everything is technologically possible and accurate, with some allowances for making the construction of drones and exotic laser sintering projects seem inspiringly easy. The only misstep I spotted was in the description of Hadoop as if it were Stata (and, not being a big Hadoop user, it's possible I'm the one who's turned around on that).
As you might imagine, I found the book's treatment of politics to be a bit frustrating. Through the character of Joe Noss, Doctorow implicitly endorses the idea that our politics suffers from bad people rather than bad systems, and indulges in some familiar but still irksome third party daydreaming. The book's view of money's role is consistently grounded in quid-pro-quo, the potential importance of technology relative to traditional organizing efforts is massively overstated, and (with the exception of a reasonably humanized portrait of the SFPD) the book's worldview is consistently Manichean and adversarial. All of this is probably appropriate for a book aimed at kids, but I hope it's not what Doctorow believes (the Jacob Applebaum afterword, though inspiring in its own way, is not encouraging on this score; the second afterword by Aaron Swartz is much better).
Still, I enjoyed the read and I came away feeling like I'd been at least partially, temporarily extracted from my cynical DC technology rabbit hole. Thanks for that, Cory. I'll be recommending your novels to the next budding young hacktivist I spot.
January 10, 2021
This is the second volume in a series set is modern day alt-reality USA. The first book, Little Brother, was written as a standalone and was nominated for both Hugo and Nebula (as well as other SFF awards). I’ve read it in 2020 and really enjoyed the story and the style, here is my review. The third book, Attack Surface, is a part of monthly reading for January 2021 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group and I decided to read this one first.
The story is set a few years after Little Brother and the protagonist, Marcus Yallow hasn’t got a lot in terms of becoming rich and powerful after becoming famous. He started the University degree but had to drop out when his father was fired and his student debt skyrocketed. There is not a lot of jobs for recent dropouts in a recession economy (quite interesting, the book was published in 2013 and then the US economy was on a track to the lowest unemployment in decades, which reached its nadir under Trump but was largely a success of the previous administration). With his girlfriend, Ange, attends Burning Man and meets there Masha Maximow (a former covert agent, who was inserted in Marcus’ underground hacktivism activities, and is now on the run), who supplies him with an access to evidence rivaling WikiLeaks as her deadman switch in case she is captured. Her capture did happen soon after but Marcus finally gets a job – a web-admin and more in a Senate campaign of independent candidate, Joseph Noss. He was recruited with a caveat, “he first time I catch so much as a whiff of anything illegal, immoral, dangerous or ‘leet’”—she made finger quotes—“I will personally bounce your ass to the curb before you have a chance to zip your fly. Do I make myself crystal clear?” So now he has a sensitive info but it may wreck his career to disclose it, and even more, there is so much info that he has to read and sort it at night, working at day. And there are third parties pressing him both ways.
A worthy sequel!
The story is set a few years after Little Brother and the protagonist, Marcus Yallow hasn’t got a lot in terms of becoming rich and powerful after becoming famous. He started the University degree but had to drop out when his father was fired and his student debt skyrocketed. There is not a lot of jobs for recent dropouts in a recession economy (quite interesting, the book was published in 2013 and then the US economy was on a track to the lowest unemployment in decades, which reached its nadir under Trump but was largely a success of the previous administration). With his girlfriend, Ange, attends Burning Man and meets there Masha Maximow (a former covert agent, who was inserted in Marcus’ underground hacktivism activities, and is now on the run), who supplies him with an access to evidence rivaling WikiLeaks as her deadman switch in case she is captured. Her capture did happen soon after but Marcus finally gets a job – a web-admin and more in a Senate campaign of independent candidate, Joseph Noss. He was recruited with a caveat, “he first time I catch so much as a whiff of anything illegal, immoral, dangerous or ‘leet’”—she made finger quotes—“I will personally bounce your ass to the curb before you have a chance to zip your fly. Do I make myself crystal clear?” So now he has a sensitive info but it may wreck his career to disclose it, and even more, there is so much info that he has to read and sort it at night, working at day. And there are third parties pressing him both ways.
A worthy sequel!
March 5, 2013
Another book of ideas, to be read after Little Brother, its predecessor. Same criticism of character development, and as before, it is often more than a little preachy, putting the protagonist and his family in the middle of the many difficulties of the 2008 recession, compounded by the logical results of Marcus' activities, his father's loss of his security clearance, etc. Most ironic, and sad, is the afterword by Aaron Swartz who has since been hounded to suicide by Federal prosecutors, and the other afterword by Jacob Applebaum who asks "... if you could travel back in time an help Daniel Ellsberg leak the Pentagon Papers, ... would you risk your life?" Interestingly, Bradley Manning contacted several national papers, including the NYTimes who acted with such courage re. the Pentagon Papers, and ended up talking via IM to the despicable self-serving hacker Arian Lamo, who turned him into the FBI. The NYTimes seems to have lost the moral high ground of the Pentagon Papers times, became an apologist for the phony WMD run-up to the Iraq war, and seems to have ignored Manning's attempt to engage them in the disclosures about the Iraq war.
We live in interesting times, in which whistle blowers of all stripes are faring worse than ever. Speaking truth to power, or even to your fellow citizens has rarely been so hazardous. Perhaps some of the many adolescents who are excited by Doctorow's ideas will be able to stem the anti-democratic tide in which we are presently immersed.
If you wonder if the events described in Homeland might be an avoidable dire prognostication about some time in the hopefully distant future, take a look at the story of the seeming approach by the US Chamber of Commerce engaging a major cyber security firm in an effort to use these kinds of malware that used to be available on Rootkit.com to attack their domestic "enemies". http://truth-out.org/news/item/14951-...
This book shows the exciting possibilities, and the risks to friends, family, and individuals who act on these possibilities.
We live in interesting times, in which whistle blowers of all stripes are faring worse than ever. Speaking truth to power, or even to your fellow citizens has rarely been so hazardous. Perhaps some of the many adolescents who are excited by Doctorow's ideas will be able to stem the anti-democratic tide in which we are presently immersed.
If you wonder if the events described in Homeland might be an avoidable dire prognostication about some time in the hopefully distant future, take a look at the story of the seeming approach by the US Chamber of Commerce engaging a major cyber security firm in an effort to use these kinds of malware that used to be available on Rootkit.com to attack their domestic "enemies". http://truth-out.org/news/item/14951-...
This book shows the exciting possibilities, and the risks to friends, family, and individuals who act on these possibilities.
February 20, 2013
4.5/5 stars.
I didn't think Doctorow could top himself in terms of perfectly blending social commentary with important issues that more YA readers should be looking at with "Pirate Cinema", but I was wrong. "Homeland", the follow up to the 2008 release, "Little Brother", absolutely blows everything else out of the water. And yes, while he gets a bit didactic in this and his other works, it's stuff we need to be reading. It's stuff that's firmly rooted in reality that is absolutely frightening, and something that needs our attention. So much so that Jacob Appelbaum from Wikileaks and the dearly departed Aaron Swartz did afterwords. If that doesn't get your attention about activism and rights, I don't know what will.
Since the technical areas of this book are more or less flawless (though I took off some points for didactics when it came to certain things like 3D printers, which kind of slowed things down in some areas), I won't be talking about them. Instead, I'll be talking about why this book matters so very much to us right now as a society, and why YA readers, regardless of age, should be paying attention.
You may or may not have heard about the story of Aaron Swartz. For the sake of brevity, I won't be telling his story here - just check out his wiki page for more information. But much like Doctorow's fictitious main character Marcus, he was prosecuted, to be made an example of for his online activism about privacy, piracy, and beliefs about an open, transparent internet by the government and other entities. To the point where he became so depressed that he hung himself earlier this year - January 2013. While Marcus never goes that route, the depression of being hounded by the very people we put into office and are supposed to trust is no less than haunting. I had no idea Swartz was going to be writing one of the two afterwords, and reading it now, a month after his death, actually brought tears to my eyes. When we lose people like Swartz, we lose a lot. We lose bravery. We lose so much more than just one life.
To say this is a paranoid book is an understatement. It will teach you how to make a darknet, how to encrypt your files, and how to cover your ass when it comes to your own privacy and online rights. But it's a paranoid book we desperately need. And while a lot of "Little Brother" and "Homeland" are very, very exaggerated, if you do your research after reading, you'll find that some of it isn't so far off. Swartz's death just brings home that fact all the harder. It will make you pay attention, and want to do something. If there's anything to be said about Doctorow's books, it's the way he writes, the way he prods at you, making you want to do something, to help in the cause. Some people feel that this is too much sociopolitical commentary for the YA market, and I can see why they'd say that. But at the same time, it's the kick in our asses that we really need.
But this book is also full of hope. Hope that we're still able to stop in our tracks, turn around, and demand change. Demand what's ours, what's been taken away from us, what needs to be restored. Any and all of the above, Doctorow makes you want to get up, get angry, and do something. Whatever your cause may be, this book urges you to take up the fight. Don't be passive. Do something. Because in the end, that's how things get accomplished these days - you have to be the squeaky, annoying, loud wheel in order to get the grease. This book asks a lot of us - to have faith. That using our hope will make things change. And that's the hardest thing of all to do (if it weren't, it wouldn't be called faith, right?).
So, final verdict? This book is very dear to me, and I hope it finds a place in must-read YA fame. Enough with the paranormal romance. Enough with the love triangles. This is a book that truly matters. Pick it up, read it, and pass it along to someone you know. "Homeland" is out now from Tor Teen/Macmillan in North America, so be sure to check it out once you get the chance.
(posted to goodreads, shelfari, librarything, and birthofanewwitch.wordpress.com)
I didn't think Doctorow could top himself in terms of perfectly blending social commentary with important issues that more YA readers should be looking at with "Pirate Cinema", but I was wrong. "Homeland", the follow up to the 2008 release, "Little Brother", absolutely blows everything else out of the water. And yes, while he gets a bit didactic in this and his other works, it's stuff we need to be reading. It's stuff that's firmly rooted in reality that is absolutely frightening, and something that needs our attention. So much so that Jacob Appelbaum from Wikileaks and the dearly departed Aaron Swartz did afterwords. If that doesn't get your attention about activism and rights, I don't know what will.
Since the technical areas of this book are more or less flawless (though I took off some points for didactics when it came to certain things like 3D printers, which kind of slowed things down in some areas), I won't be talking about them. Instead, I'll be talking about why this book matters so very much to us right now as a society, and why YA readers, regardless of age, should be paying attention.
You may or may not have heard about the story of Aaron Swartz. For the sake of brevity, I won't be telling his story here - just check out his wiki page for more information. But much like Doctorow's fictitious main character Marcus, he was prosecuted, to be made an example of for his online activism about privacy, piracy, and beliefs about an open, transparent internet by the government and other entities. To the point where he became so depressed that he hung himself earlier this year - January 2013. While Marcus never goes that route, the depression of being hounded by the very people we put into office and are supposed to trust is no less than haunting. I had no idea Swartz was going to be writing one of the two afterwords, and reading it now, a month after his death, actually brought tears to my eyes. When we lose people like Swartz, we lose a lot. We lose bravery. We lose so much more than just one life.
To say this is a paranoid book is an understatement. It will teach you how to make a darknet, how to encrypt your files, and how to cover your ass when it comes to your own privacy and online rights. But it's a paranoid book we desperately need. And while a lot of "Little Brother" and "Homeland" are very, very exaggerated, if you do your research after reading, you'll find that some of it isn't so far off. Swartz's death just brings home that fact all the harder. It will make you pay attention, and want to do something. If there's anything to be said about Doctorow's books, it's the way he writes, the way he prods at you, making you want to do something, to help in the cause. Some people feel that this is too much sociopolitical commentary for the YA market, and I can see why they'd say that. But at the same time, it's the kick in our asses that we really need.
But this book is also full of hope. Hope that we're still able to stop in our tracks, turn around, and demand change. Demand what's ours, what's been taken away from us, what needs to be restored. Any and all of the above, Doctorow makes you want to get up, get angry, and do something. Whatever your cause may be, this book urges you to take up the fight. Don't be passive. Do something. Because in the end, that's how things get accomplished these days - you have to be the squeaky, annoying, loud wheel in order to get the grease. This book asks a lot of us - to have faith. That using our hope will make things change. And that's the hardest thing of all to do (if it weren't, it wouldn't be called faith, right?).
So, final verdict? This book is very dear to me, and I hope it finds a place in must-read YA fame. Enough with the paranormal romance. Enough with the love triangles. This is a book that truly matters. Pick it up, read it, and pass it along to someone you know. "Homeland" is out now from Tor Teen/Macmillan in North America, so be sure to check it out once you get the chance.
(posted to goodreads, shelfari, librarything, and birthofanewwitch.wordpress.com)
October 9, 2020
I didn't realize going in that 'Homeland' was intended for young adults. I'm not sure if knowing that would have changed my opinion about it. The novel has what seems to be a consistent problem for Doctorow: all-pervasive narrative contrivance. The protagonist knows all the right moves, everything from how to whip up some delicious pho (Doctorow lets the reader know it's pronounced "fah," lest you think him one of those ignorant plebes who pronounces it as "foe"), beat a lie detector (practice puckering your butt beforehand so you can do it while talking). This amazing omniscience only seems to fail when it's necessary to advance the plot. Conversely, as in 'Little Brother,' the hero always seems to know just the right person with just the right obscure skill to save the day, whether that means computer hacking or building and flying surveillance drones. Marcus fights with his girlfriend (about what? I don't know, and I'm not sure either of them know, either), which I think happens mainly so that some aspect of his life doesn't seem magically easy.
What you won't find in this novel is anything like a coherent plot. Marcus does things. Things happen to him. He does more things. Questions are raised, but not answered. Characters are introduced to move the plot a little further down the field, and then they vanish. Go ahead, name one of the supporting characters. Now describe him or her without referring to the one setpiece moment in which he or she figures prominently. Betcha can't. The other thing you won't find in this novel is any sense of resolution. Marcus works an independent candidate's election campaign. Does the candidate win in the end? What happens to the villain? Who are the mysterious hackers stalking Marcus? Why the hell do we get 50 pages dedicated to cold-brewed coffee? If the author doesn't care about the answers, why should the reader? This book has more Chekov's guns lying around than a Brighton Beach pawnshop.
Doctorow suggests that if you downloaded his book for free (I did) and you enjoyed it (I emphatically did not), that you purchase a hard copy and donate it to a school or library. I would suggest you instead writer your local school or library a modest check, which they can then spend on a good book, with less risk of lining Cory Doctorow's pockets.
What you won't find in this novel is anything like a coherent plot. Marcus does things. Things happen to him. He does more things. Questions are raised, but not answered. Characters are introduced to move the plot a little further down the field, and then they vanish. Go ahead, name one of the supporting characters. Now describe him or her without referring to the one setpiece moment in which he or she figures prominently. Betcha can't. The other thing you won't find in this novel is any sense of resolution. Marcus works an independent candidate's election campaign. Does the candidate win in the end? What happens to the villain? Who are the mysterious hackers stalking Marcus? Why the hell do we get 50 pages dedicated to cold-brewed coffee? If the author doesn't care about the answers, why should the reader? This book has more Chekov's guns lying around than a Brighton Beach pawnshop.
Doctorow suggests that if you downloaded his book for free (I did) and you enjoyed it (I emphatically did not), that you purchase a hard copy and donate it to a school or library. I would suggest you instead writer your local school or library a modest check, which they can then spend on a good book, with less risk of lining Cory Doctorow's pockets.
August 16, 2013
I must say that, after reading -and greatly enjoying- Cory's first book in the series, Little Brother, I found Homeland, the sequel, a little disappointing.
The plot and the main theme are more or less the same as the previous novel, following Marcus Yallow and his friends in their fight for freedom and civil rights.
But, if both the goal and the message are highly remarkable, the plot simply isn't.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice, enjoyable read. But it can't be compared to the previous novel.
It sometimes lookes like the author doesn't know what he's getting at, either. The conclusion of the story is rushed and absolutely anti-climax, as if he had no more new ideas, as if he didn't know how to end it without mimicking the first book, and so he just rushed to the end without twists.
On the other hand, in other parts of the book, he just goes on rambling and rambling about apparently random subjects, like Burning Man festival (Ok, it's great, we got it: but is it really necessary to talk about it for a quarter of the book?),or how to draw a perfect coffee, or how random numbers are nice.
It's OK, more than OK actually, if a book teaches you things you wouldn't expect to learn: but in the end it started to sound like a collage of science mini lessons, oddities and fun facts.
So. Not bad, enjoyable, but if you expect it to hold on to the premises of Little Brother you may be disappointed.
The plot and the main theme are more or less the same as the previous novel, following Marcus Yallow and his friends in their fight for freedom and civil rights.
But, if both the goal and the message are highly remarkable, the plot simply isn't.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice, enjoyable read. But it can't be compared to the previous novel.
It sometimes lookes like the author doesn't know what he's getting at, either. The conclusion of the story is rushed and absolutely anti-climax, as if he had no more new ideas, as if he didn't know how to end it without mimicking the first book, and so he just rushed to the end without twists.
On the other hand, in other parts of the book, he just goes on rambling and rambling about apparently random subjects, like Burning Man festival (Ok, it's great, we got it: but is it really necessary to talk about it for a quarter of the book?),or how to draw a perfect coffee, or how random numbers are nice.
It's OK, more than OK actually, if a book teaches you things you wouldn't expect to learn: but in the end it started to sound like a collage of science mini lessons, oddities and fun facts.
So. Not bad, enjoyable, but if you expect it to hold on to the premises of Little Brother you may be disappointed.
September 30, 2013
This is a "Young Adult" novel so although it is well written, there is a healthy dose of over-explanation (as you might expect). I might be showing my age here, but it did irk me that Marcus (or Doctorow) felt he could trust the reader to get the oblique "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" reference but needed to explain a quote from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to death.
While Little Brother was concerned with the "war on terror", Patriot Act and Guantanamo, the background to this novel is the Occupy Movement, Wikileaks and the age of austerity. It seemed to be setting out to inspire, more than to teach, so not so much on the details of TOR or cryptography. Because of the focus on movements against the system, I felt that Homeland was less bleak than its predecessor (unlike Kathy Ceceri at wired.com).
A compelling read, which I finished in a few days. The edition I read contained an essay at the end by Aaron Swartz, which I found poignant. Highly recommended.
While Little Brother was concerned with the "war on terror", Patriot Act and Guantanamo, the background to this novel is the Occupy Movement, Wikileaks and the age of austerity. It seemed to be setting out to inspire, more than to teach, so not so much on the details of TOR or cryptography. Because of the focus on movements against the system, I felt that Homeland was less bleak than its predecessor (unlike Kathy Ceceri at wired.com).
A compelling read, which I finished in a few days. The edition I read contained an essay at the end by Aaron Swartz, which I found poignant. Highly recommended.
July 9, 2022
A five-star rallying cry for individual autonomy over exploitive corporations, corrupt public servants, and voter / consumer apathy, but presented as a dreadfully dull story full of weak, unsympathetic characters. Doctorow is a smart, ethical guy, who is apparently a rather ordinary writer of fiction.
October 20, 2022
The follow-up to Little Brother is more of the same—which isn’t necessarily bad. I think these would make for excellent required reading in school. The characters are a little flat, in a consistently YA way, and they’re obviously ideologues for counterculture ideas around surveillance state and what that now looks like and operates like, in the globalized, online era. I’d hazard a guess most people don’t know about the ways they can protect themselves, or why they should do so, and this book is excellent on that front.
The actual plot, though less… bombastic? to be gouache, is pretty similar to the first. The conflict exists to elucidate a particular issue. The characters relationship continues, turbulent as ever, and is tested again. Yada yada yada. These should be in school libraries and discussed, I think, as they are relevant, and free (as all of the authors works are, DRM free and I believe published in Creative Commons), and still highly relevant. It would be baffling for schools not to take advantage and they are far more pertinent than, say, Go Ask Alice, which we were made to read.
The actual plot, though less… bombastic? to be gouache, is pretty similar to the first. The conflict exists to elucidate a particular issue. The characters relationship continues, turbulent as ever, and is tested again. Yada yada yada. These should be in school libraries and discussed, I think, as they are relevant, and free (as all of the authors works are, DRM free and I believe published in Creative Commons), and still highly relevant. It would be baffling for schools not to take advantage and they are far more pertinent than, say, Go Ask Alice, which we were made to read.
April 24, 2018
Hackers & Villains
Homeland è un libro contraddittorio, difficile da definire in maniera univoca, tanti e tali sono i motivi di interesse e per contro talmente vistose sono le debolezze che presenta.
In primo luogo va precisato che il romanzo, edito nel 2013, è il seguito con i medesimi personaggi di Little Brother (2008), pubblicato in Italia col titolo X: le date sono importanti perché gli argomenti trattati prefigurano in maniera inquietante gli eventi che nella nostra realtà contemporanea ruotano intorno al caso Assange e al caso Snowden.
Si tratta quindi di documenti segreti e decriptati abusivamente in grado di rivelare una massa enorme di dati scottanti per i Servizi Segreti americani e dei tentativi, assolutamente scorretti per uno Stato democratico, di bloccarne la diffusione fino a contrastarne anche fisicamente la pubblicazione con metodi repressivi degni di un regime totalitario.
Sull’altro piatto della bilancia abbiamo purtroppo una forma molto insoddisfacente, nei caratteri dei personaggi, nelle dinamiche fra di essi, nel modo di dipanare una trama che, per dirla in breve, presenta gli elementi di un genere a me fastidiosissimo, classificabile nella categoria “Young Adult” (protagonisti tutti teen-agers incompresi dalla famiglia, generosi e idealisti, scarsamente distinguibili l’uno dall’altro con peculiarità rappresentate dall’autore in modo grezzo e impersonale, in assenza di qualsiasi sfumatura o di un minimo spessore psicologico).
Volendo proseguire questo gioco di contrapposizioni si può annoverare con (lieve) soddisfazione un’atmosfera libertaria, ancorché piuttosto carica di ingenuità e utopia, che pervade il libro, ma d’altra parte un eccesso di tecnicismi informatici che a volte rendono il testo quasi un manuale per aspiranti hackers (anche un po’ datato, mi pare, pur non essendo il sottoscritto un esperto in materia…).
In definitiva il romanzo di Cory Doctorow (nessuna parentela col grande omonimo…) è un coacervo di elementi non ben amalgamati fra loro, un instant book volonteroso ma anche velleitario cui va riconosciuto il merito di affrontare tematiche di grande risonanza attuale, un mondo finora poco rappresentato dal suo interno e dico “interno” perché l’autore è chiaramente un ex-hacker oggi blogger attivista nei movimenti per i diritti digitali… Sono argomenti di cui sentiremo sempre più parlare ma, si spera, affrontati con una cura rivolta non solo alle “meraviglie tecnologiche” ma anche, trattandosi di romanzo, ad un impianto narrativo decente.
Homeland è un libro contraddittorio, difficile da definire in maniera univoca, tanti e tali sono i motivi di interesse e per contro talmente vistose sono le debolezze che presenta.
In primo luogo va precisato che il romanzo, edito nel 2013, è il seguito con i medesimi personaggi di Little Brother (2008), pubblicato in Italia col titolo X: le date sono importanti perché gli argomenti trattati prefigurano in maniera inquietante gli eventi che nella nostra realtà contemporanea ruotano intorno al caso Assange e al caso Snowden.
Si tratta quindi di documenti segreti e decriptati abusivamente in grado di rivelare una massa enorme di dati scottanti per i Servizi Segreti americani e dei tentativi, assolutamente scorretti per uno Stato democratico, di bloccarne la diffusione fino a contrastarne anche fisicamente la pubblicazione con metodi repressivi degni di un regime totalitario.
Sull’altro piatto della bilancia abbiamo purtroppo una forma molto insoddisfacente, nei caratteri dei personaggi, nelle dinamiche fra di essi, nel modo di dipanare una trama che, per dirla in breve, presenta gli elementi di un genere a me fastidiosissimo, classificabile nella categoria “Young Adult” (protagonisti tutti teen-agers incompresi dalla famiglia, generosi e idealisti, scarsamente distinguibili l’uno dall’altro con peculiarità rappresentate dall’autore in modo grezzo e impersonale, in assenza di qualsiasi sfumatura o di un minimo spessore psicologico).
Volendo proseguire questo gioco di contrapposizioni si può annoverare con (lieve) soddisfazione un’atmosfera libertaria, ancorché piuttosto carica di ingenuità e utopia, che pervade il libro, ma d’altra parte un eccesso di tecnicismi informatici che a volte rendono il testo quasi un manuale per aspiranti hackers (anche un po’ datato, mi pare, pur non essendo il sottoscritto un esperto in materia…).
In definitiva il romanzo di Cory Doctorow (nessuna parentela col grande omonimo…) è un coacervo di elementi non ben amalgamati fra loro, un instant book volonteroso ma anche velleitario cui va riconosciuto il merito di affrontare tematiche di grande risonanza attuale, un mondo finora poco rappresentato dal suo interno e dico “interno” perché l’autore è chiaramente un ex-hacker oggi blogger attivista nei movimenti per i diritti digitali… Sono argomenti di cui sentiremo sempre più parlare ma, si spera, affrontati con una cura rivolta non solo alle “meraviglie tecnologiche” ma anche, trattandosi di romanzo, ad un impianto narrativo decente.
April 25, 2013
Marcus was known as m1k3y when he was younger, a web protestor and advocate of human rights who exposed government corruption. In Homeland, Marcus is a young adult, just beginning life outside of university. He has all of the regular issues facing a young person – searching for a job, dealing with student loans, new relationships… but he also has had a new set of responsibilities placed on him. When two of his friends are kidnapped, they leave him with a huge document listing and proving a remarkable variety of government and corporate abuses of power, criminal activities, and general corruption. He has to think about his own safety and the safety of his friends and family when he decides whether to release this information to the public.
The world Cory Doctorow creates in "Homeland" is one of corruption by people in positions of power (the 1%), government control, surveillance, invasions of privacy, and the general disinclination of the public to challenge these systems of control and abuse…. in other words, our world. Homeland, as well as being a brilliant story, is a call to activism, a demand that readers open their eyes and see the world around them with all of its flaws and to do something about the horrors that are being perpetrated in their name (in the name of the public, in public security, or ‘our best interest’).
You can read a larger version of this review at my website at http://speculatingcanada.wordpress.co... .
The world Cory Doctorow creates in "Homeland" is one of corruption by people in positions of power (the 1%), government control, surveillance, invasions of privacy, and the general disinclination of the public to challenge these systems of control and abuse…. in other words, our world. Homeland, as well as being a brilliant story, is a call to activism, a demand that readers open their eyes and see the world around them with all of its flaws and to do something about the horrors that are being perpetrated in their name (in the name of the public, in public security, or ‘our best interest’).
You can read a larger version of this review at my website at http://speculatingcanada.wordpress.co... .
March 21, 2013
If you loved Little Brother, you'll want to read this, too. It's the same mix: one teenage moral dilemma after another, blended with evangelism for freedom through cryptography.
Since Cory Doctorow is a fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I was irritated by his use of a sandstorm to literally blow his main characters into a tent containing three of the leading lights of the EFF -- and Wil Wheaton, the internet hero formerly of Star Trek: The Next Generation and eponym of Wheaton's Law. Through the rest of the novel, I felt the EFF hanging over me as a deus ex machina in waiting. It didn't seem to occur to Marcus, though.
The book ends with an afterword by Aaron Swartz, which gives a sadly appropriate conclusion to a story about the breakdown of society.
Since Cory Doctorow is a fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I was irritated by his use of a sandstorm to literally blow his main characters into a tent containing three of the leading lights of the EFF -- and Wil Wheaton, the internet hero formerly of Star Trek: The Next Generation and eponym of Wheaton's Law. Through the rest of the novel, I felt the EFF hanging over me as a deus ex machina in waiting. It didn't seem to occur to Marcus, though.
The book ends with an afterword by Aaron Swartz, which gives a sadly appropriate conclusion to a story about the breakdown of society.
October 8, 2014
I took too much time getting to the sequel to Big Brother and I feel slightly ashamed. I loved seeing Mikey older and stressed out, feeling the gestalt of a world that had gotten darker and watching him barely scrape by.
Burning Man notwithstanding, which was both familiar and amusing, the main action and plot of the novel was full of Deep Message. Not bad, I don't mind that kind of thing, personally. But fortunately, the novel was so full of technogeekery and informaticofuckery that it nicely sidestepped the need to focus on plot.
It was all very amusing. I loved the novel on two fronts. It was very political and it was very nerdy. What's not to love?
Burning Man notwithstanding, which was both familiar and amusing, the main action and plot of the novel was full of Deep Message. Not bad, I don't mind that kind of thing, personally. But fortunately, the novel was so full of technogeekery and informaticofuckery that it nicely sidestepped the need to focus on plot.
It was all very amusing. I loved the novel on two fronts. It was very political and it was very nerdy. What's not to love?
August 15, 2022
This is the sequel to Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008). Do not read this first.
A few years have passed since the events of Little Brother. Marcus and Ange have settled into a comfortable boyfriend/girlfriend life, and are attending a Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. But they are abruptly and unwillingly pulled back into a subversive world opposing the secretive oppressive actions of the federal government and corrupt corporate powers. Someone has collected a massive block of the true accounts of government employees made uncomfortable by their immoral assignments. This block is entrusted to Marcus by an old hacker acquaintance named Masha with a promise that he will release it if she is disappeared. A little later, in front of their eyes, she is kidnapped by some unidentified thugs.
The story then is more a pure YA thriller than another dive into computing technology like Little Brother. The prevalence of the internet, and all the shady stuff that can go on there, is now to forefront. The protest actions are modeled after the Occupy Movement, in all its non-hierarchical organization. Once again, I have to stress that all this is a pre-Trumpian conception – there are no right-wing formulations of revolution against a liberal establishment working the same ground.
I was a little disappointed that the characters to the side of Marcus have become more simplistic than in Little Brother. His parents are now supporters with no particular perspective of their own. Ange is now a supportive girlfriend with no particular perspective of her own. Similar statements could be made about all of his old friends. Even Joe Noss, the Independent candidate for California senate seat, is just pursuing an establishment version of Marcus’s ideas. The only character with any diverging agenda is the kidnapped Masha, and unfortunately, she does not return to the storyline until nearly the end.
I was a little confused by the ending. Still, there are a lot of interesting ideas aired in the novel, and in the Afterwords by Jacob Applebaum (WikiLeaks) and Aaron Swartz (Reddit.com).
I read this 2013 sequel to Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008) because that first volume is covered in Lecture 22 “Cyberpunk Dystopia: Doctorow and Anderson” from Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature, a Great Courses video lecture series by Pamela Bedore. This sequel preceded the course by four years, but is not mentioned there. There is also a third novel in the series, Attack Surface (2020), which I will be reading soon.
A few years have passed since the events of Little Brother. Marcus and Ange have settled into a comfortable boyfriend/girlfriend life, and are attending a Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. But they are abruptly and unwillingly pulled back into a subversive world opposing the secretive oppressive actions of the federal government and corrupt corporate powers. Someone has collected a massive block of the true accounts of government employees made uncomfortable by their immoral assignments. This block is entrusted to Marcus by an old hacker acquaintance named Masha with a promise that he will release it if she is disappeared. A little later, in front of their eyes, she is kidnapped by some unidentified thugs.
The story then is more a pure YA thriller than another dive into computing technology like Little Brother. The prevalence of the internet, and all the shady stuff that can go on there, is now to forefront. The protest actions are modeled after the Occupy Movement, in all its non-hierarchical organization. Once again, I have to stress that all this is a pre-Trumpian conception – there are no right-wing formulations of revolution against a liberal establishment working the same ground.
I was a little disappointed that the characters to the side of Marcus have become more simplistic than in Little Brother. His parents are now supporters with no particular perspective of their own. Ange is now a supportive girlfriend with no particular perspective of her own. Similar statements could be made about all of his old friends. Even Joe Noss, the Independent candidate for California senate seat, is just pursuing an establishment version of Marcus’s ideas. The only character with any diverging agenda is the kidnapped Masha, and unfortunately, she does not return to the storyline until nearly the end.
I was a little confused by the ending. Still, there are a lot of interesting ideas aired in the novel, and in the Afterwords by Jacob Applebaum (WikiLeaks) and Aaron Swartz (Reddit.com).
I read this 2013 sequel to Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008) because that first volume is covered in Lecture 22 “Cyberpunk Dystopia: Doctorow and Anderson” from Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature, a Great Courses video lecture series by Pamela Bedore. This sequel preceded the course by four years, but is not mentioned there. There is also a third novel in the series, Attack Surface (2020), which I will be reading soon.
June 24, 2013
The easiest way to review Homeland is in relation to Doctorow's other YA novels. This one is not substantively different in style or content; he seems to be settling into a form that either works for you or it doesn't. He may not have an exceptional gift for style; his language, plots, and characters are all unremarkable, but effective. It seems that reading Doctorow's novels is like reading his blogs, which in turn appear to be not that different than sitting in his mind for a bit. And because I think he has an exceptional understanding of what matters (except he apparently thinks coffee matters a lot more than I think a beverage should), I think the chance to see through his eyes is worthwhile, no matter how straightforward the language used to describe what he sees.
I would say that Homeland falls short of Little Brother, mostly because the content of the first in the series was so perfect a fit for Doctorow's substance-based form that his success in presenting it overwhelmed any other aspect. However, picking up Homeland less than year after reading the first, I found myself hard pressed to remember any character details about Marcus and his supporting cast. And as it progressed, it seemed that the Marcus that had already experienced the trials and successes of Little Brother somehow remained as much of a blank reader stand-in as he was prior to those events. Starting from that point made LB effective, but reverting back to it is a serious shortcoming. Further, the lack of resolution of several plot lines and vague relationship drama (reminiscent of the confusing romance of Pirate Cinema) stood in the way of allowing the narrative to flow in any entertaining or memorable way.
Fortunately, Doctorow asserts his strengths by returning to a well structured and important set of problems, philosophies, attitudes, and technologies that accurately reflect our present and future. For the Win never grabbed me with the immediate realism needed to believe it could happen, and Pirate Cinema didn't have the world shaking importance needed to rouse my rebellious streak (despite agreeing very much with the copyleft philosophy). But Marcus's fight is a truly worthy one, and this time it has grown appropriately to the level of big-P Politics, corporatism and all the horror that comes with the two. By bringing in the reality of Wikileaks, the Occupy movement, military contracting, shady financial dealings, and tying it to the real Maker and hacker mentality of the individuals working in that reality, Doctorow creates a story of real substance. I cannot attest to the accuracy of the cryptobabble, or even all of the Maker toys, but the point remains that it is real enough. It makes you want to do more, for fun, yes, but also to help the good guys. And in a poignant way that will be lost to most, the late Aaron Swartz's fingerprints are evident in the story, long before his compelling afterward. This novel is but one of the many ways that Doctorow is fighting the good fight; reading it may play a role in motivating you to play your part in the battle.
I would say that Homeland falls short of Little Brother, mostly because the content of the first in the series was so perfect a fit for Doctorow's substance-based form that his success in presenting it overwhelmed any other aspect. However, picking up Homeland less than year after reading the first, I found myself hard pressed to remember any character details about Marcus and his supporting cast. And as it progressed, it seemed that the Marcus that had already experienced the trials and successes of Little Brother somehow remained as much of a blank reader stand-in as he was prior to those events. Starting from that point made LB effective, but reverting back to it is a serious shortcoming. Further, the lack of resolution of several plot lines and vague relationship drama (reminiscent of the confusing romance of Pirate Cinema) stood in the way of allowing the narrative to flow in any entertaining or memorable way.
Fortunately, Doctorow asserts his strengths by returning to a well structured and important set of problems, philosophies, attitudes, and technologies that accurately reflect our present and future. For the Win never grabbed me with the immediate realism needed to believe it could happen, and Pirate Cinema didn't have the world shaking importance needed to rouse my rebellious streak (despite agreeing very much with the copyleft philosophy). But Marcus's fight is a truly worthy one, and this time it has grown appropriately to the level of big-P Politics, corporatism and all the horror that comes with the two. By bringing in the reality of Wikileaks, the Occupy movement, military contracting, shady financial dealings, and tying it to the real Maker and hacker mentality of the individuals working in that reality, Doctorow creates a story of real substance. I cannot attest to the accuracy of the cryptobabble, or even all of the Maker toys, but the point remains that it is real enough. It makes you want to do more, for fun, yes, but also to help the good guys. And in a poignant way that will be lost to most, the late Aaron Swartz's fingerprints are evident in the story, long before his compelling afterward. This novel is but one of the many ways that Doctorow is fighting the good fight; reading it may play a role in motivating you to play your part in the battle.
March 21, 2013
Is it too much to hope that this book lives up to the high-water mark of its predecessor?
Apparently not. While there's a lot less action and/or humor than the first book, the general spirit of rebellion and justice remains, and it's still a most satisfying read. After all, Joss Whedon stated that he would like to make The Avengers 2 something "smaller" and "more personal" than the first. Doctorow seems to have followed a similar philosophy here. The book depends more on small moments than big, sweeping events, for example the early scene where Marcus and Ange take shelter from a sandstorm at Burning Man and end up playing D&D with Wil Wheaton, of all people. (Having just started watching Star Trek TNG for the first time this weekend, I found this scene especially hilarious.)
In addition, it feels a lot more current than the first book ever did. When Little Brother came out, it may have been clearly influenced by the decisions of the Bush Administration, but with its pervasive use of more advanced technology even than today's stuff, it was quite obviously meant to be Twenty Minutes Into The Future. This book updates the setting very slightly, as only two years have passed in-universe (compared to six in reality), so now we have more up-to-date references like Twitter, Occupy and Android (I especially liked how Marcus was able to make and use a ParanoidAndroid smartphone OS.) It also means that the first book feels (unintentionally) dated, which is really sad because Little Brother's supreme scariness should not be underestimated.
After reading, stick around for two afterwords - the second of which was written by the famous Aaron Swartz (RIP). Had this book been written maybe a year later, I bet Marcus would have probably devoted one of his little tangents to Swartz the way he did for Alan Turing in Little Brother.
Apparently not. While there's a lot less action and/or humor than the first book, the general spirit of rebellion and justice remains, and it's still a most satisfying read. After all, Joss Whedon stated that he would like to make The Avengers 2 something "smaller" and "more personal" than the first. Doctorow seems to have followed a similar philosophy here. The book depends more on small moments than big, sweeping events, for example the early scene where Marcus and Ange take shelter from a sandstorm at Burning Man and end up playing D&D with Wil Wheaton, of all people. (Having just started watching Star Trek TNG for the first time this weekend, I found this scene especially hilarious.)
In addition, it feels a lot more current than the first book ever did. When Little Brother came out, it may have been clearly influenced by the decisions of the Bush Administration, but with its pervasive use of more advanced technology even than today's stuff, it was quite obviously meant to be Twenty Minutes Into The Future. This book updates the setting very slightly, as only two years have passed in-universe (compared to six in reality), so now we have more up-to-date references like Twitter, Occupy and Android (I especially liked how Marcus was able to make and use a ParanoidAndroid smartphone OS.) It also means that the first book feels (unintentionally) dated, which is really sad because Little Brother's supreme scariness should not be underestimated.
After reading, stick around for two afterwords - the second of which was written by the famous Aaron Swartz (RIP). Had this book been written maybe a year later, I bet Marcus would have probably devoted one of his little tangents to Swartz the way he did for Alan Turing in Little Brother.
April 6, 2013
I couldn't put this book down. It felt cyberpunky. It felt like a hip spy-novel. It was great. For the first 260 pages or so. Then, it starts to break down. Like the message is more important than the story. Which is sad because the message is so important. Just read the 2 afterwords and the bibliography to realize how important. I was reading for the story and the story falls flat.
The story follows Marcus as he comes into possession of some influential data. What he does with the data. And how having and releasing the data impacts his life. It also show me that I have to try cold brewed coffee. The pieces are present for a great short-story. But for a full novel? Not so much.
The main antagonist has no depth. She is evil because she is evil. We never see anything from her point of view so that's to be expected. But the only reason she is after Marcus is to protect herself. What is worse is all the bad guys suffer from this same one-dimension villainy as well.
I don't want to put spoilers in my review but there are two I have to mention. Marcus, one of the most paranoid and security conscious computer users has his computer hacked. Sure. Maybe the people that hacked him are amazing. Maybe they work with Masha and the data was used to infect him. Maybe....oh nevermind...we don't need an explanation on this. But there are words upon words devoted to explaining the details of all the other technology.
Second Marcus makes the decision to confront Johnstone. Go Marcus! But the confrontation is really no confrontation. Masha comes and negotiates a deal. Seriously. The confrontation that has been building for 2 books is resolved (largely) off-camera?
I hate hitting the 2-star rating for this. This might have the same problems Little Brother had: it is a young adult novel about technology I already know a great deal about. But I can't look past the flat antagonists and the dud of a climax.
The story follows Marcus as he comes into possession of some influential data. What he does with the data. And how having and releasing the data impacts his life. It also show me that I have to try cold brewed coffee. The pieces are present for a great short-story. But for a full novel? Not so much.
The main antagonist has no depth. She is evil because she is evil. We never see anything from her point of view so that's to be expected. But the only reason she is after Marcus is to protect herself. What is worse is all the bad guys suffer from this same one-dimension villainy as well.
I don't want to put spoilers in my review but there are two I have to mention. Marcus, one of the most paranoid and security conscious computer users has his computer hacked. Sure. Maybe the people that hacked him are amazing. Maybe they work with Masha and the data was used to infect him. Maybe....oh nevermind...we don't need an explanation on this. But there are words upon words devoted to explaining the details of all the other technology.
Second Marcus makes the decision to confront Johnstone. Go Marcus! But the confrontation is really no confrontation. Masha comes and negotiates a deal. Seriously. The confrontation that has been building for 2 books is resolved (largely) off-camera?
I hate hitting the 2-star rating for this. This might have the same problems Little Brother had: it is a young adult novel about technology I already know a great deal about. But I can't look past the flat antagonists and the dud of a climax.
April 15, 2013
This is the sequel to his awesome book, Little Brother. It is full of computer hacking heroes who battle covert government agencies that want to track citizen's every move. It had burning man festivals, homemade drones, fancy computer coding tricks(that I didn't understand), massive San Francisco demonstrations, evil police brutality, outrage over student loans and unemployment, independent politicians trying to change government, and a distinct love for wikileaks. It was definitely a call to action via awesome technology. There were some letters at the end of the book which made this obvious if the plot didn't - one by someone in wikileaks.
I really was obsessed while reading this book - it grabbed me and I didn't want to put it down. I liked the main character who was a 19 year old kid who was inadvertently made into a symbol of resistance against government dominance in this and the first book - but was scared and disturbed about his situation. I thought that the end fell a bit flat, but the interesting technology and plot-line kept me going. It had the same complete distrust of big government that you might find on the far-right, but the characters resisted using computer programming rather than collecting an firearm arsenal. Refreshing.
I really was obsessed while reading this book - it grabbed me and I didn't want to put it down. I liked the main character who was a 19 year old kid who was inadvertently made into a symbol of resistance against government dominance in this and the first book - but was scared and disturbed about his situation. I thought that the end fell a bit flat, but the interesting technology and plot-line kept me going. It had the same complete distrust of big government that you might find on the far-right, but the characters resisted using computer programming rather than collecting an firearm arsenal. Refreshing.
May 11, 2013
Despite being more than slightly didactic (Doctorow slips in lectures on politics, internet privacy, and making good coffee, and the maker and free software movements) Homeland (like "Little Brother," to which it is the sequel) manages to be entertaining and suspenseful, primarily because its viewpoint character, Marcus is so credible as a young hacker who becomes increasingly politically radicalized in the face of escalating violations of privacy and civil liberties in the US (in Doctorow's "if this goes on" near-future story, the terrorism panic of 9-11 has been escalated by a second major domestic terrorism event). The author is mostly successful in delivering his lectures in Marcus's voice. And they are good lectures.
November 3, 2015
Not as thrilling as the first one. Still very good, and for the same reasons Little Brother was, but not as much as I expected from the sequel of one of the books I loved the most in the entire year. The ending, moreover, was too feeble and flat, and thus very disappointing.
December 19, 2022
Cory Doctorow kan schrijven, doet dat niet vrijblijvend en steekt behoorlijk wat vaart, actie en spanning in zijn boeken. Little Brother vinden we nog steeds één van de meest verrassende, beklijvende en relevante boeken die we de afgelopen jaren ontdekten: het jongvolwassenen-genre overstijgend, maar wel snel, toegankelijk, spannend en beklijvend.
Dat we ooit Homeland (Little Brother #2) gingen lezen, stond in de sterren geschreven, maar dat we er niet zo van onder de voet als van Little Brother #1 gingen zijn, eigenlijk ook.
Ook nu komt hacker & IT-nerd Marcus weer temidden protesten, schimmige overheidsorganisaties, corrupte agenten en gelekte documenten terecht in een Californië dat meer op een fascistiche politiestaat lijkt dan op de vrije blije hippiestad die we in het achterhoofd hebben.
Ook nu zijn het de onbegrensde mogelijkheden van het internet, de solidariteit onder hackers en het potentieel van technologie die Marcus en zijn vrienden (en de rechtvaardigheid?) ondanks alles overeind houden.
Is het omdat we de formule al kenden dat we wat minder onder de indruk waren? Of zijn de plotwendingen die Doctorow in Homeland gebruikt echt wel simplistischer? Het boek is goed geschreven en we lazen het graag, maar de lat die Doctorow met Little Brother legde, wordt niet gehaald.
Extra lof krijgt de auteur wel voor de activistische en oprechte pamfletten die hij achteraan het boek toevoegt. Daarin wijst hij lezers de weg naar de technologie die privacy kan beschermen of laat hij (wijlen) Aaron Swartz en Jacob Appelbaum aan het woord om de lezers erop te wijzen dat de dingen die in Homeland gebeuren, ook feitelijk bestaan en plaatsvinden. Activisme en literatuur hand in hand, dat stemt ons vreugdevol.
Dat we ooit Homeland (Little Brother #2) gingen lezen, stond in de sterren geschreven, maar dat we er niet zo van onder de voet als van Little Brother #1 gingen zijn, eigenlijk ook.
Ook nu komt hacker & IT-nerd Marcus weer temidden protesten, schimmige overheidsorganisaties, corrupte agenten en gelekte documenten terecht in een Californië dat meer op een fascistiche politiestaat lijkt dan op de vrije blije hippiestad die we in het achterhoofd hebben.
Ook nu zijn het de onbegrensde mogelijkheden van het internet, de solidariteit onder hackers en het potentieel van technologie die Marcus en zijn vrienden (en de rechtvaardigheid?) ondanks alles overeind houden.
Is het omdat we de formule al kenden dat we wat minder onder de indruk waren? Of zijn de plotwendingen die Doctorow in Homeland gebruikt echt wel simplistischer? Het boek is goed geschreven en we lazen het graag, maar de lat die Doctorow met Little Brother legde, wordt niet gehaald.
Extra lof krijgt de auteur wel voor de activistische en oprechte pamfletten die hij achteraan het boek toevoegt. Daarin wijst hij lezers de weg naar de technologie die privacy kan beschermen of laat hij (wijlen) Aaron Swartz en Jacob Appelbaum aan het woord om de lezers erop te wijzen dat de dingen die in Homeland gebeuren, ook feitelijk bestaan en plaatsvinden. Activisme en literatuur hand in hand, dat stemt ons vreugdevol.
March 31, 2013
I don’t really seek out overtly political books—mainly nonfiction, but when I come across a fiction book that’s very political, I tend to side-eye it a little more. There’s a reason why books like Fahrenheit 451 works so well is that the politics they discuss aren’t so topically specific. And as a personal preference, I don’t really seek out books that I know I’m going to disagree with or something that’s way more extreme than I believe. (I consider myself a moderate, for the record.) While I consider Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother a great discussion of American security and psychology post-9/11, Homeland feels more like a personal manifesto for Occupy Internet. I didn’t think it works as well—my own misgivings of “A sequel to Little Brother? Really?” aside. (Not that I scoffed at it, just that I wasn’t jumping up and down for “MORE MORE!” )
One of the big problems I had overall was the retreading of major plot points from the first book. I do like Marcus is still dealing with the massive psychological trauma inflicted on him from Little Brother and that it’s not just touched on once or twice, it’s fully explored. I wasn’t as big of a fan of the fact that his torturer, Carrie Johnstone, was dragged back into the plot as one of the main antagonists’ lackeys. I wouldn’t have minded it if Marcus had thought he saw Johnstone at Burning Man, only for him to mistake another woman for her. I actually didn’t mind it when the hackers taunted Marcus with her hacked files and his ‘cowardice’ for not making them public. But having her as a player in the larger events didn’t sit well with me, and it does feel like Doctorow’s rehashing here.
My other major problem is that I really don’t know what the book’s message is. Going in, with the opening chapters set at Burning Man and the implication of sensitive leaked documents, it feels like that the core of the book is going to be about information and it’s widespread availability. (The post-script by the late Aaron Swartz also nods towards this.) But a quarter of the way in, it begins to turn into a rail against the American two-party system and for that, I think it loses its focus. I’m not being critical about Doctorow’s own political beliefs, but this is where the book turns from discussion to manifesto—I never felt like I was reading about a character whenever Marcus was attending the various protests and I was really taken out of the story. And for as much as Marcus rants on big corporations ruining the economy and forcing people to lose their jobs, it’s an extremely privileged ranting. There is never a discussion on poverty nor homelessness or what cash-strapped families are actually like, and if renting out driveaway space is considered drastic measures by Marcus’s standards, that is not even lower middle-class. My family’s income is about the same as Marcus’s and dude, that’s not what being cash-strapped is like. (Allow me to say that I’ve been very fortune with my family’s financial situation, and I acknowledge that.)
This is not completely disagreeing with Doctorow’s points, but in Little Brother, Marcus did come to a conclusion at some points that his knee-jerk reactions are probably not the best way to go about starting a revolution. There’s none of that here. Marcus is (rightfully) more jaded in this book, but even when he tries to work within the system, he ultimately throws up his hands and goes “Nope, can’t work. I’m done.” There is a bit of middle ground with his working with independent Senator Joseph Noss, but by the end of the book, even that’s been chucked.
Homeland’s main strength, however, is showing us how the central core of Marcus and his friends have evolved since the events of Little Brother. I liked that Jolu was ready to help Marcus after years of minimal contact, and that Marcus was willing to reach out to Darryl and Van. And while Ange is still a largely supporting character that doesn’t do much aside from help out Marcus, I do like that she finally calls him out on a lot of his faults . As I mentioned above, I liked that Marcus is confronted with a bunch of immature hackers who try to rile him up and post damning files about Marcus’s former foes. (I actually liked that the self-proclaimed master hacker of the first book gets hacked; it’s a nice touch of hubris.) But unfortunately, a lot of this takes a backseat to the larger political discussion at hand.
While I’m not completely opposed to the idea of a Little Brother sequel in general, Homeland doesn’t make as good as a follow-up. It’s not to say that it’s a bad book overall—as I said, I liked how Marcus’s PTSD was handled and how he’s still haunted by his past. But the message just didn’t work for me at times, and it felt like a retread of the first book at points.
One of the big problems I had overall was the retreading of major plot points from the first book. I do like Marcus is still dealing with the massive psychological trauma inflicted on him from Little Brother and that it’s not just touched on once or twice, it’s fully explored. I wasn’t as big of a fan of the fact that his torturer, Carrie Johnstone, was dragged back into the plot as one of the main antagonists’ lackeys. I wouldn’t have minded it if Marcus had thought he saw Johnstone at Burning Man, only for him to mistake another woman for her. I actually didn’t mind it when the hackers taunted Marcus with her hacked files and his ‘cowardice’ for not making them public. But having her as a player in the larger events didn’t sit well with me, and it does feel like Doctorow’s rehashing here.
My other major problem is that I really don’t know what the book’s message is. Going in, with the opening chapters set at Burning Man and the implication of sensitive leaked documents, it feels like that the core of the book is going to be about information and it’s widespread availability. (The post-script by the late Aaron Swartz also nods towards this.) But a quarter of the way in, it begins to turn into a rail against the American two-party system and for that, I think it loses its focus. I’m not being critical about Doctorow’s own political beliefs, but this is where the book turns from discussion to manifesto—I never felt like I was reading about a character whenever Marcus was attending the various protests and I was really taken out of the story. And for as much as Marcus rants on big corporations ruining the economy and forcing people to lose their jobs, it’s an extremely privileged ranting. There is never a discussion on poverty nor homelessness or what cash-strapped families are actually like, and if renting out driveaway space is considered drastic measures by Marcus’s standards, that is not even lower middle-class. My family’s income is about the same as Marcus’s and dude, that’s not what being cash-strapped is like. (Allow me to say that I’ve been very fortune with my family’s financial situation, and I acknowledge that.)
This is not completely disagreeing with Doctorow’s points, but in Little Brother, Marcus did come to a conclusion at some points that his knee-jerk reactions are probably not the best way to go about starting a revolution. There’s none of that here. Marcus is (rightfully) more jaded in this book, but even when he tries to work within the system, he ultimately throws up his hands and goes “Nope, can’t work. I’m done.” There is a bit of middle ground with his working with independent Senator Joseph Noss, but by the end of the book, even that’s been chucked.
Homeland’s main strength, however, is showing us how the central core of Marcus and his friends have evolved since the events of Little Brother. I liked that Jolu was ready to help Marcus after years of minimal contact, and that Marcus was willing to reach out to Darryl and Van. And while Ange is still a largely supporting character that doesn’t do much aside from help out Marcus, I do like that she finally calls him out on a lot of his faults . As I mentioned above, I liked that Marcus is confronted with a bunch of immature hackers who try to rile him up and post damning files about Marcus’s former foes. (I actually liked that the self-proclaimed master hacker of the first book gets hacked; it’s a nice touch of hubris.) But unfortunately, a lot of this takes a backseat to the larger political discussion at hand.
While I’m not completely opposed to the idea of a Little Brother sequel in general, Homeland doesn’t make as good as a follow-up. It’s not to say that it’s a bad book overall—as I said, I liked how Marcus’s PTSD was handled and how he’s still haunted by his past. But the message just didn’t work for me at times, and it felt like a retread of the first book at points.
November 4, 2015
I'm not normally a great consumer of audiobooks. Generally, I find they require too much concentration for the times and locations that they claim to be perfect for – I like to concentrate on my driving while driving, I don't have a garden to tend and, to be honest, while I'm out running I'm too busy thinking about avoiding traffic and not having a heart attack to be listening to audiobooks. Train journey's, flights and other travelling it's just as easy to read a book proper anyway, so why bother with audiobooks? However, after a speculative subscription to audible, I found myself with a cache of long un-listened-to audiobooks and a recent holiday, with a flight, gave me the perfect opportunity. But – to throw a spanner in the works – Humble Bundle announced a bonus, limited edition, audiobook of Will Wheaton (commissioned by Doctorow himself) reading Homeland: a book that was already at the top of my next-in-series list, and my previous plans went out the window...
Homeland is the second in Doctorow's Little Brother series. As with the previous novel, if focuses on the young Californian hacker Marcus Yallow. After his traumatic treatment at the hands of Homeland Security in that first novel, Marcus seems keen to try and move on. Intent, instead, on attending his first Burning Man festival. However, when he sees one of the Agents who held him filming people there it seems as if Marcus's past isn't going to let him go. Coupled with an apparently chance meeting with Masha (his nemesis from the previous novel), who leaves him with a USB stick of potentially explosive leaked documents, Marcus is thrown back into just the kind of world that he was hoping he was done with.
Where Little Brother was a story about terrorism, and more specifically, the security services' complete over-reaction to terrorism, because you know ... terrorism. Homeland is Doctorow's take on the Wikileaks and Snowdon stories. In Doctorow's novel they decide not to pass the information to the Guardian and let them work through it, instead they form a hacker collective and sift through the information themselves. As a result, Marcus and his friends feel the weight of both the information and the responsibility – Marcus's new job is clearly dependent on not even a whiff of trouble being attached to him – of the decision to leak or not to leak.
Wheaton's narration is a pleasure to listen to. And with Doctorow having personally commissioned Wheaton's reading, this was clearly a labour of love for both of them. I would have loved to have been there as Wheaton reached the part of the novel that he briefly cameos in – he manages to make it not seem like a big deal in the reading – but listening to his breathy wading through, what was presumably several pages of, Pi was both surreal and an experience I just had to stop and offer to share with those around me – they declined; their loss. If all audiobooks were this much fun to listen to I'm sure we'd all do it far more often.
Doctorow's usual level of research and explanation of technologies, maths, products, hacks and special installs fill out the novel without taking it over. If you like your YA with a strong technological and libertarian bent, then Doctorow is hard to beat. Plus there's lots of geeky name dropping.
Homeland is the second in Doctorow's Little Brother series. As with the previous novel, if focuses on the young Californian hacker Marcus Yallow. After his traumatic treatment at the hands of Homeland Security in that first novel, Marcus seems keen to try and move on. Intent, instead, on attending his first Burning Man festival. However, when he sees one of the Agents who held him filming people there it seems as if Marcus's past isn't going to let him go. Coupled with an apparently chance meeting with Masha (his nemesis from the previous novel), who leaves him with a USB stick of potentially explosive leaked documents, Marcus is thrown back into just the kind of world that he was hoping he was done with.
Where Little Brother was a story about terrorism, and more specifically, the security services' complete over-reaction to terrorism, because you know ... terrorism. Homeland is Doctorow's take on the Wikileaks and Snowdon stories. In Doctorow's novel they decide not to pass the information to the Guardian and let them work through it, instead they form a hacker collective and sift through the information themselves. As a result, Marcus and his friends feel the weight of both the information and the responsibility – Marcus's new job is clearly dependent on not even a whiff of trouble being attached to him – of the decision to leak or not to leak.
Wheaton's narration is a pleasure to listen to. And with Doctorow having personally commissioned Wheaton's reading, this was clearly a labour of love for both of them. I would have loved to have been there as Wheaton reached the part of the novel that he briefly cameos in – he manages to make it not seem like a big deal in the reading – but listening to his breathy wading through, what was presumably several pages of, Pi was both surreal and an experience I just had to stop and offer to share with those around me – they declined; their loss. If all audiobooks were this much fun to listen to I'm sure we'd all do it far more often.
Doctorow's usual level of research and explanation of technologies, maths, products, hacks and special installs fill out the novel without taking it over. If you like your YA with a strong technological and libertarian bent, then Doctorow is hard to beat. Plus there's lots of geeky name dropping.
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