To understand the book Little Brother, one must first understand Cory Doctorow. Doctorow is a member of a group of minds who are of the opinion that all digital media should be shareable. He is against copyrighting, and most of his works are viewable for free online under creative commons licensing. Doctorow believes the creators of the media should have the copyright, and that said media should be free to be used as the creator pleases. These ideas come out strongly in Little Brother.

Little Brother is the story of Marcus, a teenager/gamer/self-made genius. He and his group of friends start out innocent enough, skipping school to play a game. But when a bomb goes off in San Francisco, their homeland, they become captured by Homeland Security. From there, the story becomes a technology driven war of attrition between Marcus’s fellow teens and the government. It is a compelling and terrifying look at what could happen as the United States government goes to extremes to neutralize an internal threat.

This novel is thrilling, full of the choking thought of having your worst enemy be the group you are supposed to trust. There are many points in the early stages of the novel that make you feel the setting well. You are constantly put into situations where it feels like you, not the character, lose people or feel hopelessly lost yourself. The setting, when it isn’t on the internet or main characters’ houses, can give off a very real, close feeling. You also are given enough insight into the characters to start to feel for them, especially during the early parts of the narrative. The most realistic feeling in I felt during this narrative was a growing, infectious paranoia. I truly began to fear the walls themselves, wondering what kind of people my government’s employees really were. Which departments I could trust? Which would readily take me away to control the people around me? The story does a remarkable job turning those we have learned to trust so deeply into the bad guy.

The “trust nobody” feeling of Little Brother is what kept me into it. Cory Doctorow’s writing is at first appealing and witty, but falls short and becomes repetitive uncomfortably quickly. His style feels like an attempt at comedy, and his language is so lighthearted that I almost lose track of the serious tone that the characters situation calls for. The laughs fall too short to actually call this book a comedy. Some people refer to Doctorow’s writing as glorified blogging. The masses are correct. The novel’s focus is lacking. Doctorow fills space that could be used to write a compact, concise story with descriptions of concepts and terms that he uses in the book. This may be an attempt at pushing into the first person point of view as fully as possible, as Marcus is the kind of kid who loves to teach himself as much as he can get his hands on, but it comes off as a drag on the reader. The book is constantly sidetracked by descriptions of random things Marcus knows that range from a paragraph to, several occassions, a full page.

The language posed another issue to me. It felt like Doctorow was trying too hard to play the part of a hot headed young teen. The sound of the book felt unnatural. It felt like someone who was trying to play the character of a teenager, but a forced, stereotypical teenager. For most of the book, I wanted Marcus to stop talking, and for a third person narrator to take over. You could never get behind Marcus on an emotional level. He had four modes: Doctorow fueled blog-like rants on minor things; angry, brooding, authority hating; perverted, unrealistic teenager; and whiny, scared, forced into the spotlight mode. None of these felt like a real human. It is difficult to read a first person novel when you can’t support the protagonist.

Little Brother isn’t a bad book, it just fell short on the expectations that I went into it with. There are plenty of readers who will enjoy it. Anyone who is entertained by the popular young adult novels such as the Hunger Games series and Divergent will be able to find a familiar style of writing and plot structure. Little Brother is also a good entry point for the young to introduce themselves into the cyberpunk and dystopian genres. It is the inflatable kiddie pool of cyberpunk. Any young readers interested in some light, reality grounded science fiction should take some time to read Little Brother.

Little Brother

Cory Doctorow

Self Published via Creative Commons

Published 2007

139 pages

Young Adult Cyberpunk, Light Scifi, Thriller

Symbiosis is “the living together of two dissimilar organisms in more or less intimate association”. This means that the two parts cannot live without each other. You can apply this idea to a huge amount of things. I would like for us to take a look at the term when it comes to understandings. You cannot have an understanding without other understandings, as every understanding is reliant on the understanding of something else. Take, for example, the slicing of an orange. You have a knife and an orange. To have the intention to slice the orange, you need to have an understanding of what a knife is used for, and the fact that the orange is soft enough to cut with said knife. We were asked to form this final portfolio around an understanding, and the understanding that I want to focus on is “Understandings have symbiotic relationships.”  So, let’s take a journey into the world of understandings.

In my World History class, we use this idea of understandings to see beyond the established, textbook facts. We synthesize this information into a more cohesive form. I want to take you through some examples of this intriguing structure. We will begin with something from the beginning of the year. In October, we conducted a trial that involved Cortes’s conquering of the Aztec nation. This started with research, as we had to establish a basic understanding of what happened, and who should be tried for what crimes. Once researching was initially finished, we had to adapt strategies for winning the trial. We had to use our prior knowledge and mix it with the knowledge we had of the trial participants speeches. From this, we formulated questions. Questions, such as “What justification do you give yourself for killing your own men, and people of your country?”. We used our understandings from each response and each group’s arguments to form questions as we went, creating a full, constricting understanding with which to pin our opponents. The full contents of our group’s look at the trial can be found here.

One of the more interesting projects I did this year for World History involved the creation of a play. We had to write a play, one that had grounding in the world, and involved world issues. For this project, I wanted to take a more personal approach and take a look at crime in Philadelphia, my home city. I did research, analyzed the crime in Philly, and used my knowledge of many events like these to write about my own, fictional version of one of these crimes and craft a story around the potential motivations behind it. In my play’s case, the reasons behind the crime can be summarized quite nicely by the main character and perpetrator of the crime’s, mother “Jeremy, I would rather die than let you get caught doin’ something illegal. I will pay for my chemo myself. And then, I’ll get better, I’ll go back to working in the office, and we can have a nice life again.” The full play is here.

Another project involved the analyzation of revolutions, finding a way to talk about and relate revolutions. The project itself asks for the fusing and synthesis of understandings. One of the major things I talked about in the project was the fact that revolutions can take many forms, which I found of import after trying to find a new way to angle my project, so as to promote a different way of understanding revolutions. So, I made the claim that flat design was a design revolution, so that I could show that things like design have revolutions too. You can find the video here.

Throughout the year, we have been using a journal to answer daily questions. These questions are used to assess our current understandings, and to wrack the minds of multiple people in the class to come up with greater understandings based on everyone’s individual thoughts. In one of my Journals, my very first one, I talk about how people are abused for the sake of labor. This is reciprocated, mixing more symbiotic understandings, towards the very end of the year, where we do another trial, this one about sweatshop labor and who is at fault. We began the year with a concept, and learned more about it later in the year. Another of my journals (found here) addresses how people’s understandings are influenced by more correct understandings.

Above Ground

Hi folks. Now, this may come off a bit odd to you people, but I’m a piece of the ground. Now, I bet you're wondering why this even matters? Well, the truth is, I have feelings too. And this pipeline thing? That is a serious no-no for me. I live in South Dakota, along the edge of the state. I like where I live, its nice, there is some local wildlife, friendly people, but not very many. And, you know what, my already low amount of neighbors will be getting smaller. If you are wondering why, then the blame goes to the Keystone XL Pipeline. This monstrous excuse of a American economic boom is a sickening piece of destruction, that is trying to directly inject poison into my body. And you know what? I like my body.

Where to start! So, the people building this pipeline think it is a nice addition to my body to stick a giant, long, obtrusive pipe straight through me, sitting in front of my face? Though I may be in an area with a low level of inhabitants, that doesn’t mean I want a construction project in the way, scaring off the wildlife and making the nature around me look terrible and unnatural.

Now, a pipeline is ugly enough from a physical direction. What happens when that pipeline is damaged? The oil, of the very corrosive tar sands variety, comes pouring out, gallons upon gallons a minute. This stuff is terrible? Now, I won’t get into how bad the mining process is, but it kills. This oil, when getting into the water, straight up murders any animal that drinks from that water. Some parts of this pipeline go over water sources for not just small woodland animals, but humans! You guys are poisoning yourself over a stinking pipeline, and you don’t have effective enough ways of getting it out. And the carbon dioxide coming out of this crack? Are you guys trying to make me look like a chain smoker? You humans say you are trying to cut down on C02 emissions, but the pipeline is effectively adding the emissions of 5.6 million cars, in the Unites States only.

If this hasn’t been clear for you listening, let me make it clear. I hate this pipeline. Hate it! It is filling the ground with poisonous, cancer giving goo that gets on and in everything you humans and the wildlife ever could possible touch. It makes me look ugly, pours stuff on me, and makes me stink. But, even more so than that, it makes me lose all respect for you humans as a race. You are the ones killing yourselves with this. It may turn me into a plague ridden monster, but it won’t kill me. I can’t die. I just sit there. All of the actual damage is done to you and your resources. It makes me sad.

The Angry Canadian

Dear TransCanada,

I am a mother of three living in Alberta, Canada, near the Boreal Forests. I am writing with a desperate plea to the board. This operation, the Keystone XL pipeline, is a destructive menace to my cherished community. I believe that you will be responsible for a large amount of damage to the local environment, and that you need to take responsibility by cancelling the pipeline project.

The project is just a generator of poison. The use of tar sands oil is the major problem. Tar sands oil is a destructive thing. It’s refinement revolves around pumping water and heat to extract bitumen, which the oil is refined from, which fills the water with toxic sludge! They are using drinking water. Our drinking water! This is a huge problem. My children drink this water! They breathe this air! What are you trying to pull here? The things you are releasing into the system are giving people cancer! Do you want to give my children cancer? I don’t think you have any right to be making this pipeline.

Do you know whatcha’ve done?You’ve gone and made a canadian woman angry. Believe me, we’re not the folks who get angry over every little thing, but when we’re mad, we’re mad. You know those forests I mentioned? Do you know where those are? That’s right, they WERE where you are drilling. But, you know what, not anymore. You tore down those those forests? And the caribou? The endangered caribou? What about them you wonder? Oh, I’ll tell you all about them. You killed them! That’s what you did! You are trying to kill my children! You are giving indigenous people cancer! And, now, you do it all by killing a precious natural site, and its caribou? I’m going to write some more strongly worded letters now!

Yours Disgustingly,

Theresa Mcintosh

Biased Toy Story

(A boy, four years of age, is playing with a set of trains. He is being questioned by reporters.)

Oh, you want me to tell you about daddy’s new pipeline? That thang he is helping get built out there aaaallllll the way across ‘murica? Well, lemme tell you all about it. Daddy and his company are making a BIIIG pipe, to move all of the oil from Canadia. You know, Canadia is a reaaally long way from Dallas. Thats where I live. Daddy’s friends are moving the oil 2147 miles. Daddy has never said a big word like that before. Well, he only says that when talking about money. Daddy says we will get lots of oil, and lots of money! And the money means more toys for me!

(Little boy turns to continue playing when he hears the inaudible response from the reporters.)

What? You said that the pipe is gonna be bad? Well, daddy says the pipe will be very good! He says that it will give lots of people jobs! There will be lots of stuff to build, and the pipe will give lots of people jobs building it. So, lots of people will have jobs and the pipeline is very, very good for you guys!

And, and, the pipeline, it gives lots of money to America! Now, daddy told me that America had to give all of its money to buy guns from China, so I have to work hard and bring millions of millions of dollars into America. So, what the oil is doing is giving lots of money to America, so they can pay back China, and so I can get lots of money and buy more toys!

(Child is in tears by now. It is the beginning of a temper tantrum.)

What about the dying trees? I don’t care. Trees die to make paper, so they die to make toys and oil and more toys. I don’t care what you say. The oil is good. Daddy says it is good, and the people that daddy talks to say it is good. So, it has to be good. Shut up! Leave! Daddy, these mean people are saying that I need to read more about the earth! Make them go away!

Mitchell Berven-Stotz

Introduction:

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is an adventure and tragedy novel. The thing that makes it different from most books of that kind, however, is that Into Thin Air is a completely true story. It is about the 1996 mount everest disaster, in which many people died during one storm, at or around the summit of Mount Everest. Even more interesting is that the author of the book, Jon Krakauer, was a part of the event. Into Thin Air was a bestselling nonfiction book when it came out in 1997.

About the Book:

In Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer is assigned as a reporter for Outside magazine, an outdoors themed magazine. Krakauer is a climbing enthusiast, and had wanted to attempt to summit Everest since he was a child. He got assigned to summit everest with a New Zealand based guiding organization called Adventure Consultants, led by an extremely skilled long time climber named Rob Hall. Along the way, Hall’s team worked with the Mountain Madness organization led by American climber Scott Fischer, and several other groups, including a group shooting an IMAX film, led by world renowned climber David Breashears.

While starting as a seemingly average climb, a surprise blizzard storm kicks in. This blizzard will go on to kill over seven people during the course of a single night, from the many dangers that can arise at high altitude, away from immediate assistance. There are a huge amount of things that can kill you during mountain climbing, from frostbite, blood clots induced by altitude, and brain effecting illnesses that remove almost all common sense or judgement and puts a clock on one’s life.

The primary conflict of the story is that of person, or in this case, people vs nature. These people go up against one of the largest natural dangers on the planet, Mt Everest. In that sense, you could say that their conflict is with themselves, since they are putting their own lives in danger. However, the main expeditions of this event were prepared and practiced to the utmost degree, and, in all honesty, should have survived easily. It was the natural forces of a storm and altitude illnesses that caused the disaster, not a significant human error.

My favorite character in the book was Rob Hall, the leader of the primary guide group, Adventure Consultants. He was extremely reliable, a good person to be friends with, and he just seemed like a good guy to be around. His power over most of the people during the event inspired me, and showed me what it meant to be a true leader, something I joined Science Leadership Academy to do.

I think that it is important for readers to realise that this is a true story. These terrible and shocking events actually happened, and they killed real people, with real families. I think that it is extremely important for people to realise that the events that take place in fictitious tragedies can also take place in real life, and that people should honor the life they have. If you plan on risking it, make sure it is worthwhile. I’m not even sure if I would risk my life even if it was worthwhile, though.

Personal Experience:

In an odd sort of way, I can relate Jon Krakauer’s Everest expedition to when I joined high school. I entered high school and judged those who were around me, just like Jon judged the people who climbed with him. I thought of some people as below me, wondering how they made it into the school, whether they were up to the challenge. Some people I thought of as above me, with skills I couldn’t even compare to. However, as I went through my freshman year, I got to know a lot more about the people around me, and started to realise that, they were all capable people to various degrees, though they all had their own personal pitfalls. Not everyone was as skilled at everything, but everyone had their own special skills.

However, unlike the people in this book, I have never been in a life threatening situation. Sure, I was nervous and scared during my first few weeks of school, but then I got used to it. I was in an overall safe environment, and I knew this. The people on that fated mountain were not so fortunate. They were dropping like stones as nature and faulty judgement threw them under the bus. They had no way to ensure their own safety, and they lost those that they could believe in, such as their guides.

Opinion:

I believe that Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild is an exciting and interesting book, for a niche audience. I found it intriguing, but it is not the type of story that caters to most readers. Due to the fact that it is a work of nonfiction, written by a journalist, it is full of detail. Those who like detail will love this book, but those who just want action, or romance, or comedy will find this book lacking (It does have a lot of suspense though). It is a book that aims to give as exact an account of a terrifying and traumatizing experience. It was written as a form of personal healing for Jon, adn it is not a book for the weak hearted.

The problems I have with the book would be hypocritical, and go against what I said previously. I personally do not like the slow speed of the book, which, at 305 pages, does not seem like it could possibly fit so much detail into the pages it provides. I would have liked for a bit more visualization and action, but I take what the book can give. It was completely gripping, and I found it highly interesting. It was absolutely worth the read.

I recommend this book to those who enjoy facts, suspense, and those who want to come to grips with the true terrors of nature. This book is not for the weak, but it provides a story that will interest all who can stand this type of tale.