It’s been 12 years since I went on my first book tour and in the years since, I’ve met and spoken with tens of thousands of readers in hundreds of cities on five continents in support of more than a dozen books.
Now I’ve got another major book coming out: ATTACK SURFACE.
How do you tour a book during a pandemic? I think we’re still figuring that out. I’ll tell you one thing, I won’t be leaving Los Angeles this time around. Instead, my US publisher, Tor Books, has set up eight remote “Attack Surface Lectures.”
https://read.macmillan.com/torforge/cory-doctorow-virtual-lecture-series/
Each event has a different theme and different guest-hosts/co-discussants, chosen both for their expertise and their ability to discuss their subjects in ways that are fascinating and engaging.
ATTACK SURFACE is the third Little Brother book, a standalone book for adults.
It stars Masha, a young woman who is finally reckoning with the moral character of the work she’s done, developing surveillance tools to fight Iraqi insurgents and ex-Soviet democracy activists.
Masha has struggled with her work for years, compartmentalizing her qualms, rationalizing her way into worse situations.
She goes home to San Francisco and discovers her best friend, a BLM activist, is being targeted by the surveillance weapons Masha herself invented.
What follows is a Little Brother-style technothriller, full of rigorous description and extrapolation on cybersecurity, surveillance and resistance, that illuminates the tale of a tech worker grappling with their own life’s work.
Obviously, this covers a lot of ground, as is reflected in the eight nights of talks we’re announcing today:
I. Politics & Protest, Oct 13, with Eva Galperin and Ron Deibert, hosted by The Strand Bookstore
II. Cross-Medium SciFi, Oct 14, with Amber Benson and John Rogers, hosted by Brookline Booksmith
III. ​​Intersectionality: Race, Surveillance, and Tech and Its History, Oct 15, with Malkia Cyril and Meredith Whittaker, hosted by Booksmith
IV. SciFi Genre, Oct 16, with Sarah Gailey and Chuck Wendig, hosted by Fountain Books
V. Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk, Oct 19, with Bruce Sterling and Christopher Brown, hosted by Andeersons Bookshop
VI. Tech in SciFi, Oct 20, with Ken Liu and Annalee Newitz, hosted by Interabang
VII. Little Revolutions, Oct 21, with Tochi Onyebuchi and Bethany C Morrow, hosted by Skylight Books
VIII. OpSec & Personal Cyber-Security: How Can You Be Safe?, Oct 22, with Runa Sandvik and Window Snyder, hosted by Third Place Books
Some of the events come with either a hardcover and a signed bookplate, or, with some stores, actual signed books.
(those stores’ stock is being shipped to my house, and I’m signing after each event and mailing out from here)
(yes, really)
I’ve never done anything like this and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about it. Book tours are crazy marathons – I did 35 cities in 3 countries in 45 days for Walkaway a couple years ago – and this is an entirely different kind of thing.
But I’m also (very) excited. Revisiting Little Brother after seven years is quite an experience. ATTACK SURFACE – a book about uprisings, police-state tactics, and the digital tools as oppressors and liberators – is (unfortunately) very timely.
Having an excuse to talk about this book and its themes with you all – and with so many distinguished and brilliant guests – is going to keep me sane next month. I really hope you can make it.
