Introduction: To highlight the four-decade history of the Prometheus Awards, and make clear what libertarian futurists saw and see in each of our past winners that make them deserve recognition as pro-freedom sci-fi/fantasy, we’re continuing our series of weekly Appreciations of past Prometheus Award-winners, starting with our original category for Best Novel.
Here’s the latest Appreciation for Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, the 2009 Prometheus Award winner for Best Novel:
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.
Continue reading The National-Security State and government repression: An Appreciation of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, the 2009 Prometheus Award winner for Best Novel