Shelf Life

With recomendations from Scott Westerfield, Neil Gaiman, and Steven Gould how could you go wrong? Cory Docotorow, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Boing Boing, has written a timely and exciting work about what happens when a society gives up freedom for security (btw– it gets niether).

Marcus Yallow and his friends are on the streets of San Francisco playing an Alternate Reality Game when terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge and the BART Trans-Bay Tunnel. Unable to find shelter, they are swept up by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and are questioned and tortured in “Gitmo by the Bay.” They are humiliated and broken and released, warned not to talk about what happened.

Marcus discovers that his beloved San Francisco has become a police state. Determined not to take it lying down Marcus declares a digital war on the DHS, organizing a teen rebelion against the suspension of civil liberties. Using open source software and encryption protocols they create an underground computer network and use it to organize against the authorities. But can they stand up to the nearly unlimited resources and personnel of a federal government gone bad? To find out, read

Little Brother

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By Mr Doyle

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