As part of our ongoing Appreciation series explaining why each work deserved to win the Prometheus awards and how it fits the award’s pro-liberty themes, here is our Appreciation for Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, the 2009 Prometheus Award winner for Best Novel:
By Michael Grossberg
In Little Brother, Cory Doctorow offers a powerful cautionary tale about threats to liberty from the National Security State.
His bestselling 2008 novel, now widely considered a modern classic in the coming-of-age and dystopian genres, revolves around a high-school student and his techno-geek friends who are rounded up in the hysteria following a terrorist attack.
Doctorow focuses on the consequences and costs of the repression by government agencies in the aftermath of the attack as teen Marcus Yallow and four techno-geek friends are forced to defend themselves against the Department of Homeland Security’s attacks on the Bill of Rights when they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time as San Francisco is targeted for a terrorist attack.
Rounded up and imprisoned in a general sweep, Marcus attempts to assert his rights but his efforts earn him harsh treatment. After being released, he works to undermine the terrorist state and build tools that make it possible for private citizens to communicate privately and to organize out of the government’s sight. The emphasis is on how people find the courage to respond to oppression.
Paying tribute to another Prometheus-winning dystopian classic about a mass-surveillance police state, Doctorow based his title on Big Brother and lets Marcus name his online self after Winston, the central character in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four.
With its focus on resourceful and resilient teen-agers confronting adversity and authoritarian government, Little Brother also has significant appeal for younger readers, especially teenagers and older adolescents.
With an eye on the past and the future, Doctorow highlights the perils of government abuse of technology and its potential to safeguard liberty – themes appealing to all ages and generations.
Note: Homeland, Doctorow’s sequel to Little Brother, won the 2014 Prometheus Award for Best novel.
ABOUT CORY DOCTOROW
Note: Doctorow has won two other Prometheus Awards for Best Novel, including Pirate Cinema in 2013 and Homeland in 2014.
Doctorow, a Canadian sf writer, also was nominated for Prometheus Awards for Best Novel for Makers (2010), For the Win (2011) and Walkaway (2018).
* Coming up soon on the Prometheus Blog: A 40th Anniversary Celebration and appreciation of the next novel to be recognized with a Prometheus Award: Dani and Eytan Kollin’s The Unincorporated Man, the 2010 winner for Best Novel.
* See related introductory essay about the LFS’ 40th anniversary retrospective series of Appreciations of past Prometheus Awards winners, with an overview of the awards’ four-decade history.
* Other Prometheus winners: For a full list of winners – for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the recently updated and enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website.
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards, join the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit volunteer association of libertarian sf/fantasy fans and freedom-lovers.
Libertarian futurists believe cultural change is as vital as political change in achieving universal individual rights and a better world (perhaps eventually, worlds) for all.
