Little Brother

Little Brother is a Post Cyber Punk novel by Cory Doctorow. It follows the story of Marcus Yallow, a high school student who forms a movement against the San Francisco Department of Homeland Security for kidnapping his best friend.

Can be read online here; other formats are here.

Not to be confused with the Alternative Rap group of the same name.

Tropes used in Little Brother include:

• Adults Are Useless: Invoked: "DON'T TRUST ANYONE OVER 25". This is actually a Shout-Out to a hippie slogan, which was discussed within the novel.
  • Ultimately subverted, after Marcus finally tells everything, Barbara solves the plot in a matter of days.
    • Also in Real Life there are shitloads of people over 25 who would have heard of that, for the simple fact that they go on the same sites and feel the same way.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Marcus gets away with lots of terrorism-related charges, but gets sentenced for stealing a mobile phone.
• Author Appeal: Arguably to the point of anvilice. Lampshaded in the introduction.
• Bittersweet Ending
• Blonde Republican Sex Kitten: The replacement Social Studies teacher, Mrs. Andersen, is described like this.
• Chekhov's Gun: The photo of Marcus and his friends cutting class.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Masha, the girl with the pink hair.
• Coming of Age Story
• Completely Missing the Point: The Judge who seems to be the most concerned about stealing the phone.
• Conversational Troping: The social studies class is basically this.
  • Actually a monologue, but Marcus researching Jack Kerouac biography can also count.
• Crapsack World
• Downer Ending: Subverted. The police arrive and arrest Carrie Johnstone and the rest of the DHS personnel running the Hellhole Prison on Treasure Island at the last minute.
• Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: Several, including Waterboarding and Lying to the Perp, are used by the Department of Homeland Security.
• Everything Is Online: The ubiquitous RFID tags, used to track books and supplies in the school, and later vehicles all over the city.
• Expospeak: Doctorow seems to love stopping the action to put a few paragraphs here and there. To be fair, some of them are not-so-widely-known Truth in Television:
  • There are a few fairly accurate, Layman's Terms descriptions of the workings of the Internet.
  • The story of Alan Turing.
  • The crypto court case mentioned in chapter 17 was an actual case.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Sanguine: Vanessa.
  • Choleric: Marcus.
  • Melancholic: Jolu.
  • Phlegmatic: Darryl.
• The Hero: Marcus, in his ARG team.
• Hollywood Hacking: Thoroughly averted.
• Karma Houdini: Most of the people behind or involved in the detentions.
• Last-Minute Hookup: The last few pages imply both Darryl/Van and Masha/Zeb.
• Leet Lingo: both of Marcus' nicknames.
• Lewd Lust, Chaste Sex: The most explicit actions get the least explicit descriptions.
• Love Triangle: Marcus/Vanessa/Darryl and Vanessa/Marcus/Angela.
• Madness Mantra: Darryl takes to muttering "I'm sorry" repeatedly after being held in Gitmo-by-the-bay.
• Mood Whiplash: Done masterfully with the first few chapters. When it begins, it's all about Marcus, the smart kid surrounded by stupid adults and teachers who has the system around his fingertip, and his small band of cool, funny friends and their Alternate Reality Games and their geeky hobbies. Then, just when you start seriously wondering if you might have accidentally picked up one of those young adult books, in a few terrifying and confusing paragraphs everything changes and suddenly Marcus is in prison and his friend is gone and his parents are alienated and the world is changed. Essentially, the reader experiences the same Mood Whiplash Marcus does.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The 17-year-old Marcus mentions being into Dreamcast games when he was 7. To be fair, he doesn't say the Dreamcast was new at the time, but the Xbox Universal and Paranoid Linux are the only blatantly futuristic elements.
• No Communities Were Harmed: The Xnet seems to be based on Anonymous.
  • No, X Net seems to be based off the Dark Net, networks like Tor, Freenet and I 2 P. They were connecting onto Tor from what I remember of the novel using a Linux distro for Xboxes.
• No Name Given: Subverted - severe haircut woman is revealed in the epilogue to be named Carrie Johnstone.
• Oblivious to Love: Marcus to Vanessa.
• Politically-Motivated Teacher: Two social studies teachers, on very opposite sides of the political spectrum.
• Pre-Climax Climax: Subverted.
• Product Placement: entire chapters are dedicated to (mostly publishing) companies.
• Quote Mine:
  • XNET LEADER: I COULD GET METAL ONTO AN AIRPLANE
  • DHS DOESN'T HAVE MY CONSENT TO GOVERN
  • XNET KIDS: USA OUT OF SAN FRANCISCO
• Shout-Out: The title, to the Big Brother of Orwell, of course. Marcus' former alias "w1n5t0n" is an another one.
  • There are also mentions of things like LARP, Doujinshi, gothic lolita, Harajuku Bridge, Meido, etc...
• Shown Their Work: Both in the text and in the afterwords.
• Sinister Surveillance
• The Smart Girl: Vanessa for the Harajuku Fun Madness game, according to Jolu.
• Society Marches On: Despite taking place in the near future, it seems that the most modern, technically adept trendy teenagers in San Francisco still use flippy cell phones with hard buttons, rather than touchscreen-based smartphones of the kind everyone and their cat has now. Also, Osama Bin Laden is still alive as the leader of Al-Qaeda, which is still a big threat to the US.
• Teen Superspy
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Though never explicitly stated, the novel is supposed to take place a few years into the future (as of 2008, when it was published). As the author noted in an interview, 95% of the technology in the book already exists, and the other 5% could be developed within five years.
• We Will Use Wiki Words in the Future
• What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: Justified, Marcus is a 17-year old after all.
• What the Hell, Hero?: This is how Vanessa and Marcus' friendship ends. For a while.
• Your Radio Hates You

Tonight I couldn't laugh. Most of the callers wanted to ask what to do about the fact that they were having a hard time getting busy with their partners ever since the attack. Even on sex-talk radio, I couldn't get away from the topic.

• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters