A few days ago, Patrick Nielsen Hayden posted a note on Making Light offering ARC copies of Cory Doctorow’s new YA novel Little Brother. Through the magic of RSS, Your Humble Blogger was one of the first 83 respondents, and my copy arrived in the mail yesterday. Well, not the mail. The other guys who bring packages. Anyway.
In return for the free book, Mr. Nielsen Hayden asked for a promise to “read it immediately and talk about it to your friends—online, on your blog, in a forum somewhere, in somebody’s comment section, or just in plain old in-person conversation.” That seemed reasonable. I’ve noticed an increase in publishers sending out free advance copies to reading bloggers; Gentle Readers may remember that Harper Collins sent me three books (of varying quality) before I stopped remembering to check their lists, and I keep forgetting to sign up for LibraryThings similar program. What’s different about this is that the book’s editor put up the offer on what is essentially a personal blog, and did it in a very personal way. I like that. I like the official stuff too. It’s all good.
Any road, having made such a promise, I am working on keeping it. Sadly, I forgot the whole read it immediately part of the promise, and have continued to read two of the other books I’m in the middle of (Nicholas Nickleby, again, and The Story Is True, oh, and Aubrey’s Brief Lives in the downstairs bathroom) whilst starting on Little Brother. So I’ve decided to make up a bit for the slowness by writing an interim report, and likely a series of interim reports, rather than just writing one Book Report at the end of the thing, where I get all distracted by something somebody else named Cory once said and never get around to the book.
Y’all are familiar with Cory Doctorow? Yes? This is a book for teenagers, with a seventeen-year-old protagonist, or at least so it appears to me at this point (p. 96, partway through Chapter Six), and I’d be surprised if Mr. Doctorow screws around with PoV stuff at this point. It’s set in the near future, and is a sort of dystopian Homeland Security State riff. At the beginning, the security theater and privacy violations (particularly of teenagers, for their safety) are already significantly worse than they are now, and then somebody blows up the Bay Bridge and the security guys crack down hard. Our Hero, whose nom de net is w1n5t0n, which thank you Mr. Doctorow he doesn't actually type out very often so far, is detained and mildly abused by The Man, and goes on a sort of anti-Statist whatsit.
I find dystopia depressing. No, don’t laugh. I mean that I find it depressing to read books set in dystopias. I was in a bad mood already, and this book (I think, insofar as I have any confidence in what actually affects my moods) deepened it. The dystopia is alarmingly plausible as a near future, which makes it worse. It’s fiction, sure, but my reaction is to defend the present situation, saying that it isn’t as bad as all that, which isn’t the point. To some extent, this is an if this goes on story, and I can’t really argue with that.
It’s more depressing because it’s set in San Francisco, and largely in a part of town I know, or used to. Goat Hill Pizza! They used to have a special, one night a week, all you could eat for something like eight bucks a head, and they would come around with pizza pies for you to nab a slice. The four of us (usually) could each eat different things, one or two of us would delight in eating small pieces of four or five different pies (with different toppings, I mean), and I would absolutely eat myself sick. I mean, disgusting. We’d stagger up to the bus stop. I can’t remember the number of that bus line. Feh. Anyway, a good memory in retrospect, even if my gut may not have forgiven me. How dare the DHS goons eat Goat Hill Pizza! Which, of course, is all deliberate and so on, but my bad mood doesn’t lift just because somebody crafted it with care.
I suspect there will be triumph, and come-uppance, and so on. I sure hope so. I’ll let you know.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
I understand that Neil Gaiman also recommended LITTLE BROTHER. A good endorsement, that, but the next Y.A. book I’d like to read is SLAM by Nick Hornby.