Jonathan Voß did me the kindness of adding hyperlinks to the afterword/bibliography for my 2013 novel Homeland. Thank you Jonathan!

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The Copper Cylinder Prize, voted on by members of the Sunburst Award Society awarded best YA novel to Homeland; best adult novel went to Guy Gavriel Kay’s River of Stars.

It’s a fantastic honour, in some ways even better than winning the juried Sunburst Award, because popular awards are given to books that have wide appeal to the whole voter pool. I’m incredibly grateful to the Sunburst Award Society, and also offer congrats to Guy for his well-deserved honour.

Sunburst Award Society Announces the Winners of Its Third Annual Copper Cylinder Awards

Neil Anderson from the Association from Media Literacy (which has a great-sounding upcoming conference) has produced an excellent study guide for my novel Homeland (the sequel to Little Brother) — Anderson’s guide encourages critical thinking about politics, literary technique, technology, privacy, surveillance, and history.

I’m immensely grateful to Anderson for his good work here. I often hear from teachers who want to know if there are any curricular materials they can use in connection with my books, and several of them have shared their own guides with me, but this one stands out as an unusually comprehensive and thoughtful one.

7. Word Meanings
Because communications technologies are central to Homeland‘s plot, the novel contains many tech-oriented words that might be unfamiliar to some readers. Because Marcus is a young adult, some words are specific to young adult culture. Explain how readers could use context to infer the meanings of unfamiliar words.

Some words that you might use for inferring meanings include:

*Rooted
*Pwned
*Faraday pouch
*Lulz
*Darknet
*Tor
*Distro

8. Representation

Marcus Yallow, Homeland’s protagonist, is a male. But there are several female characters: Ange is his girlfriend, Masha is an ally, Carrie is an enemy, and Flor is his campaign office boss.

Does Homeland represent a good balance of male and female characters or is it biased? Why?

Are the male and female characters fairly represented? Explain?

Homeland also includes representation from multiple racial/ethnic groups. Joe is African-American, Ange is Asian, etc.

How might this inclusiveness add to the novel’s authenticity and pleasure?

Some people think that it is important for audiences to see themselves represented in the media texts that they consume; that it helps them enjoy the texts and validates their own existence.

Does it really matter whether Homeland‘s characters represent a range of racial/ethnic groups?

Would the story be equally interesting and entertaining if all the characters were from only one racial/ethnic group?

Imagine that Marcus, Ange, Joe and Carrie are from other racial/ethnic groups, or that their genders are switched.

How might those changes influence readers’ responses to the story?

Homeland Study Guide [Neil Anderson/Association for Media Literacy]

Skyboat Media produced this great little documentary about Wil Wheaton’s recording sessions for the audiobook of my novel Homeland, in which he had to read out Pi for four minutes straight, read out dialog in which the narrator had a fanboy moment about meeting Wil Wheaton, and many other fun moments.

I am delighted and honored to announce that my novel Homeland has won the Prometheus Award for best novel, tying with Ramez Naam’s excellent novel Nexus. I am triply honored because this is the third Prometheus I’ve won — the other two being for Little Brother and Pirate Cinema. My sincere thanks to the Libertarian Futurist Society; I’ll see you at the Worldcon in London this year to accept it!

I’m honoured and delighted to learn that my novel Homeland has been shortlisted for Canada’s Sunburst Award, a juried prize for excellence in speculative fiction. I’ve won the Sunburst twice before, and this is one of my proudest accomplishments; I’m indebted to the jury for their kindness this year. The other nominees are a very good slate indeed — including Nalo Hopkinson’s Sister Mine and Charles de Lint’s The Cats of Tanglewood Forest.