Hiro is the real deal. For all of those reasons, it’s hard for someone like me to see someone like Hiro as “real” … [though i think he's one of my fav characters, all time ]

And while I’ll always consider the last words of one of William Burroughs’ characters, mumbled to his son on his death bed … , “Stay out of churches, son. All they got a key to is the shithouse…

And never wear a policeman’s badge…”

I have to say, Cory Doctorow’s Arturo seems so real to me. He is human confronting inhumanity. He is not unjustifiably deluded into thinking fealty to his country of origin and family, his life, is a principle worth defending …. Until he learns the truth, of course.

And i love how nothing is simple in the balance between Arturo’s repressive, corrupt, and controlling society and the “Utopian” .alt society of Eurasia …

I immediately felt an electric charge when I realized Arturo’s x-wife was in fact a synthesized copy.

To extrapolate from that epiphany leads to some very challenging futures, for anyone with thoughts of what it means to be human. And finally, the fact that

Arturo truly has so little choice. To love a child is to know that you have no choice but to save your child.

All things else — dust.

So Arturo is Father of the Year and far more real than Hiro … But both characters shine!