Corey Doctorow's Little Brother and Homeland

[Bjorn]

I've been reading Homeland over the last few days, Doctorow's sequel to Little Brother.  Ostensibly these are both young adult novels, but each deal with themes like living in a US city after a terrorist attack, use of torture by the US government, civic protests, online protests, the blending of private and governmental military groups, etc.  So super adult shit. 

 

I'm about three-quarters of the way through Homeland, and it is enjoyable, but not quite as good as LB.  It feels a lot more like Doctorow's goal was to literally introduce and teach people how and why they should be using things like TOR, Linux, custom Android installations, etc.  Which hey, is not a bad thing to teach people, but the little side explorations into explaining each of these often feel like they don't flow with the narrative.  And maybe it's going to blow my mind in the final few chapters, but the book as a whole feels much more aimless with less happening than LB did. 

 

I heartily recommend LB though, and if you enjoy it, Homeland is still probably worth picking up as it is quick read.  Just a bit disappointing.  Anyone else read them?

[dibs]

I have them on my longlist, but Cory Doctorow irritates me for some reason I can't articulate, so they will probably remain on the longlist.

[Bjorn]

I personally like Doctorow quite a bit.  I don't think his writing is as good as some of his contemporaries, but interesting ideas make up for that.  I also got to meet the guy a few years ago and chat with him for awhile, and he's super nice.  That probably makes it a lot harder to be irritated by his online persona. 

 

That said...

 

I finished Homeland last night, and I am removing any recommendation for it.  I still think LB is worth reading, but Homeland is just a mess.  It's actively working against itself at times.  This is an advocacy book, one where the ultimate lesson to learn is that yes, you can change the world!  There are two essays from famous and respected tech guys at the end to back up that message.  Unlike LB though, there's no big payoff in the end.  Everything just kinda runs out of steam and ends.  The other huge point (like almost every chapter brings this up) is the importance of protecting your privacy and information.  That you need to be running an ultra secure version of Linux, using TOR, having encrypted backups, ultra-strong passphrases, etc.  The main character gets hacked and it is never fucking explained how, when or why he got hacked.  All his preparations, all his obsessions with security.  Completely fucking meaningless.  It's also kind of tropey, in a way I wouldn't have expected.  The main character's girlfriend is a bit too close to the cheerleading pixie dream girl type.  Of female characters who show up in more than one scene, like 3 of the 4 of them express some kind of attraction to the main character.  Because....reasons?  There's a literal deus ex machina, without which the book couldn't end.  

 

A lot of my criticisms could probably be disregarded if someone approached the book as just a coming of age story, where the protagonists personal growth trumps the actual story.  Except that's not really how it is written.  The "growing up" stuff kind of gets crammed in at the end, literally trumping all the previous groundwork that was laid down for all the other story threads.  Which is also a bit insulting, as it puts the personal growth of a suburban white kid ahead of a whole fuckton more interesting stories.

 

The more I've thought about it this morning, the more frustrated I've become with it. 

[Merus]

I stopped taking Little Brother seriously when it decided to take time out to tell us that in the near future, we called pair programming* 'programming'. It was a fun read, but I also did not once believe that it was playing its cards in a fair manner because if it was then why would it go out of its way to have non-nuanced opinions on programming?

 

*pair programming is programming in pairs. The idea is that one person's typing, leaving the other person time to look over the other person's shoulder and work out they've introduced a bug. It's more effective than programming on your own, but it's not as effective as two people programming separately, except if you're trying to do something really hard. Either way, it's something in the ol' toolkit, and not the only legitimate way to program thanks very much.

[Tanukitsune]

My memory is a bit fuzzy, Homeland is the book that starts in Burning Man with a hacker kid, right? It really rubbed me the wrong way when the Burning Man  was mostly the main character constantly meeting celebrities. 

 

The girlfriend Bjorn describes sure sounds like the girl from the book, who also got on my nerves for being too perfect.

[Bjorn]

Yep, you're remembering the right book, that's it exactly. 

[osmosisch]

Tangentially, I thought Makers was pretty good though the sex scene is abominable as tends to be the rule for nerd writers. Interesting hypotheticals about 3D printing, and a cool setting with mostly flawed and interesting characters.

It's still more of an overt agenda book than I usually enjoy, and it's a bit fetishistic of tech, but I expected that going in so it didn't detract much for me.

[TangoCharlie]

Yeah, LB seemed like a survey of some of Cory's opinions on security and software and social networks and all that stuff, all held together by (what I thought) was an engaging plot. That "flow" issue bumped me, too. I didn't need what felt like an encyclopedia primer on all of these things.

 

However, that same aspect makes me think this would be a fantastic book to drop into the hands of an impressionable teenager or "tween." I imagine that's probably by design, but part of me thinks that if they're smart enough to appreciate the value of the themes and technicalities of the book, they might also be smart enough to notice its "survey" quality. Still, I like to think it would mold their impressionable minds in all the right ways. If I knew any kids of the appropriate age it would be my all-purpose gift of choice.