Little Brother reviewed

Farah Mendlesohn’s review of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother makes me think I might have to add it to my to-read pile:

As some people know, as part of an ongoing research project I’ve spent the past five years reading every science fiction book written for the Young Adult market I can get my hands on. It’s not been an entirely happy experience. In most of the books I’ve read there is an absence of any political complexity, and in particular, an inattention to the way the world works. Perhaps worse, there has been an utter failure to address what I have always thought of as one of the key factors that make an SF book an SF book, that at the end of it, the reader has learned something. This something can be about genetics, strategy in a military mission, the nature of beetle sexuality - I really and truly don’t care - but I have always regarded SF as a didactic literature and regarded that didacticism as a good thing, yet most YA SF novels lack it (even when they simultaneously promote a political viewpoint such as science is bad, it will destroy the planet, focus on your mystical abilities). Little Brother, however, is fiercely, unashamedly didactic. Doctorow revels in what he has set out to do, which is simply to place in the hands of every school child a manual which could be subtitled “how to bring down your government and enjoy doing it.” The first time I read it I was on a flight to the US, and while I became increasingly concerned that this might have been a Very Bad Idea, I also sort of hoped customs might find the book because it is inflammatory. In UK terms, it most definitely Glorifies Terrorism.

It sounds like a companion piece to my current reading, Ken MacLeod’s The Execution Channel.¹

[Via The Sideshow]

1. I’m just over 100 pages into MacLeod’s novel, but thus far it certainly looks to be a story set five minutes into the future, in a worryingly competent surveillance state. ↩