Just finished reading Cory Doctorow's amazing new science fiction novel Little Brother, and it is an absolutely devastating critique of the Bush Administration's use of 9/11 to expand the surveillance state, a detailed handbook on civil liberties and technology, and a can't-put-it-down story that will have you reading way past your bedtime. This is ostensibly a young adult book, but don't be put off — like the best of Robert Heinlein's juveniles, Doctorow writes a sophisticated tale that never talks down to the reader and which is just as enjoyable and engaging for adults. The hero just happens to be a high school kid.

A 17-year-old hacker named Marcus Yallow (or W1n5t0n, his online identity) and his friends are caught up in a DHS dragnet following a terrorist attack in San Francisco. Shocked and angered by a government response that seems both cruelly cynical and hopelessly inept, Marcus and his friends respond by creating an online-driven counterculture. Along the way, Marcus has to deal with both the challenges of being a teenager (like standing up for the Bill of Rights in social studies class) and staying paranoid enough to remain free. It's a feast for geeks: you'll learn about ARGs, encryption, RFIDs, gait recognition, and (my favorite) hacking DNS to distribute video. It's a primer on civil liberties, with deep texture and nuanced debate worthy of a lawyer from the EFF or ACLU. But it's also embedded in a gripping, edge-of-your-seat narrative that will literally have you finishing the book in a sitting. (Okay, it took me a week, but it was a busy freaking week at work, so I was reading when I could on my iPhone.)

Oh yeah. It's free. As in speech, but also as in beer. You can pop over to Doctorow's site and download it in any of a dozen (all DRM-free) formats. Like all Doctorow's work, it's Creative Commons licensed. But don't let that fool you. The hardcover is published by Tor Books, arguably sf's most prestigious imprint. You can get it from Amazon, but why not ring up our local bookstore, Island Books? (Only fitting since Doctorow dedicates each chapter to a different bookstore.)

This seemed like the perfect occasion to share a video I had to rescue off antique Beta tape, an all-star parody of 1984 from an episode of the short-lived "The New Show" back in, well, 1984. You know that famous Macintosh SuperBowl commercial from that year that says "Find out why 1984 won't be like 1984?" Well, it might have taken more than just one insanely great piece of technology to make that happen, but go read Doctorow's book, and you'll understand.

Full disclosure: I've had the privilege of workshopping with Cory, so I'm clearly biased.