Little Brother Pt. 2 and Homeland Ch. 1-3

Homeland’s Cover

For my previous discussion on Cory Doctorow and Little Brother see my last blog post. The second part of Doctorow’s young adult novel, Little Brother, involves Marcus (now known as M1k3y), and his new love interest Ange as they plot to take down the DHS. The most interesting turn of events is that after Marcus  fearfully tells his parents his story, they fully support him, and they decide to go to investigative reporter, Barbara Stratford, to release the story. Though this puts Marcus and Ange in serious danger (they are captured and tortured by the DHS) the story has a good ending. The DHS is raided by the Highway State Patrol and everyone (including Daryll) is rescued.

Doctorow is releasing Little Brother’s sequel, Homeland, in early 2013 and has released a three chapter excerpt of the novel. The excerpt takes place in Black Rock City, Nevada, the temporary city that grows and thrives during Burning Man. In three short chapters, we are reintroduced to Masha and Zeb, who have briefly come out of hiding to give Marcus and Ange a motherlode of incriminating evidence against the United States government. Soon after Severe Haircut Lady (AKA Carrie Johnstone) returns to kidnap Masha and Zed.

The setting for the book’s set up is a well-chosen symbol. Burning Man represents a “gift economy”, one in which every resident must have something to contribute to the Black Rock City community. People supply sunscreen, offer body paint, do free Tarot readings, or host an epic party, or host Dungeons and Dragons. The list goes on, but the main idea is that if you do not contribute, you are not respected in the community. You are called a spectator and are not welcome to be a part of the community or partake in the gifts. This kind of economy parallels the online hacker community. The idea behind hacker communities is that you are only allowed to reap the benefits of others’ hacks if you yourself have hacked and can offer something. This can be seen in online communities such as Pirates Bay. (I will not link here for the sake of legality). Here one can download free files, but the give and take is that you must upload something before you can download. Doctorow may have chosen the opening location of Homeland to mirror this online community.