Homeland by Cory Doctorow

I first encountered Doctorow through his incandescent YA novel, Little Brother. It's an action packed thriller, and a damning indictment of our surveillance culture.

I hadn't realised at the time of reading what a big deal he is amongst the internet's movers and shakers. (I'm so far from this I'm not really sure how such people are normally referred to!)

I've read two more novels since but he's never quit managed to reach the heady heights of Little Brother.

This is because they have been very detail heavy. Interesting to read, but at the expense of story.

One thing that has struck me is how Doctorow has almost single-handedly opened my eyes to the almost limitless possibilities of technology and the Internet.

Possibilities that exist well beyond my safe, middle class, middle England existence.

So, for the record, compared with most people who appear to use Thoughtstreams, I am a technical dunderhead. Very much a user rather than provider.

So taking on a Doctorow novel in plain view is not without risk. I guess most people reading this stream will be far more familiar with the concepts in the book, and possibly more forgiving of paragraphs of technical description and supposition.

Nonetheless. Here goes.

So unsurprisingly real life prevented me from updating this stream regularly, but I have read about 150 pages now...

My main observation is that Homeland is less visceral than it's predecessor. It lacks Little Brother's punch.

That's not to say it's not a good read. So far the technological description has been interesting, but not overwhelming, though I have at least some idea of the subject area. I suspect if you came to the novel cold, say, if you were my Dad, you'd probably put it down.

Which leads me to my main thought of the book so far. It's preaching to the converted. If you are techno savvy, and have an interest in surveillance and encryption or if you are have sympathy with Snowden and worried about the power governments and corporations have over our data, you will lap this up.

If you are yet to be convinced. This may not persuade you. So far at least.

The novel has introduced the idea of cold brew coffee. Something I have never heard of. If the results are half as good as described, knowledge of this strange alchemy will be worth the cover price alone.

Little Brother very much made me feel that if you read it and still believed if you'd done nothing wrong you had nothing to fear, you clearly hadn't paid enough attention.

In view of all that has transpired since, it's time for the message to be reiterated.

The Burning Man festival, something else I'd never heard of sounds like something my over optimistic present self would like to think my younger self might have gone to. But he wouldn't have.

On further reflection, my present self would probably quite like to be Cory Doctorow.

Ok. I've blasted through the book. It's so compelling. There's a lot of thought provoking stuff in it. I've marked a few pages (using arcane corner-turning technology). Will try to post some coherent thoughts soon.

3D Printers make the occasional cameo appearance in the novel. Pretty much everything I know about them comes from one of Cory's novels. I get the impression he probably talks about 3D printers in the same tones as other men talk about cars or football.

There's a great description of a D&D game that made me feel nostalgic, some great real person cameos there too.

Have you noticed how much money the 1% have?

Perhaps more than all the technological wizardry in the book, this question underlines what is most important in the story. Since Little Brother, all the time, the rich are getting richer. The wealth gap is wider than ever before, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Page 176 - Fiction's most interesting use of an anus. Maybe.

We're just guys with a job to do. And by the way that job is protecting your butt from some really bad guys who'd love to blow up your house and put your mama in a burka.

The justification for curtailing human rights. We know what's best for you. Clearly I can't speak about how things from before I was aware of what went on around me, but modern politics seems very much more about those we elect knowing what's best for us, rather than helping us achieve what is best for us.

Of course what this really means is keeping us docile, and if you can cream off some profits at the same time so much the better.

I also hadn't notice the irony of the use of 'protecting your butt' in view of p176, until I just wrote it out!

The dandelion method for propagating your message. Seems highly effective and incredibly powerful when harnessed with all the new methods of communication.

Persona Management. The idea that it's ' cheaper to hire someone...to help "manage your reputation" by marking your dissatisfied customers seem like lone whiners than it was to actually fix your shit'

There are a couple of lines in the book which I think succinctly sum up what's wrong with the world. The book as a whole can be seen as call to arms to put things right.

"There's something wrong with our world."

"To be replaced by a cult of greed, shortsightedness and whatever you can get away with."

These lines are pretty much the manifesto on which of the Doctorow books I've read are based.

We need politicians who stand for people not money

The book touches on laws that are supposed to protect us, but do little but diminish our ability to protest (The book is set in the US, but similar laws apply in the UK).

Special measures supposed to prevent civil disobedience can easily be twisted to break up legitimate an peaceful protest.

I must confess that I am very likely to ever go within 5 miles of a protest, but a heavy handed "lawful order to disperse" can easily turn people expressing a grievance into an angry mob. Police tactics sometimes seem designed to aggravate the unsteady.

p273 You can go now . A genius piece of storytelling

The outlining of the failures of the political system, amount largely to 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.'

It raises an interesting point. What percentage of politicians start out with only their own interests at heart? Is it a gradual decline, from idealist, to realist, to self interest? Does the grinding of the machine make it inevitable?

It was wasn't because the system had failed [...]. It was because people like me had failed to act when we could. The system was people and I was part of it, part of its problems, and I was going to be part of its solution from now on.

The clarion call of the novel. Take responsibility. It does if you can't do much, but if you want to, do something. The power to make a better world is in our hands.

It's easy to say that it's an idealist manifesto, that the masses can't do anything to change to the status quo, but that isn't true. Group action won't always be successful, it won't always have the expected results, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Doctorow, is a convincing advocate. I read his books, feel fired up that I can make the world a better place, and then the real world rumbles over me.

But I once read a writing tip from Cory, that even if you write for only twenty minutes a day, in a year you will have sizeable number of words.

I guess the same applies here. Lots of small actions regularly, will make a difference. Signing e-petitions, for example takes almost no effort. Most don't work, but some do, and its start.

Homeland is a quality successor to Little Brother. It's a little more grown up, but it's a thoughtful polemic by a man who is passionate about his message.

The level of technobabble to storytelling, was just right for me. The novel rarely became bogged down in the technical details.

All in all, this is a great book, and if more people read it, perhaps all our futures will be brighter?