Cam writes in with just about the perfect parable about why DRM just sucks:

I thought you’d be amused to hear the circumstances which caused me to pick up and read Little Brother.

Being a pretty big nerd (I’m a tech director at Electronic Arts by day), I was excited to pick up a Sony ebook reader. I got the last one in the shop, which was actually a return – but the sales guy assured me that they’d “reconditioned it”.

After taking it home and installing Sony’s terrible, terrible ebook software I was only moderately surprised to find that I couldn’t “authorise” my new reader to read their DRM-laden ebooks. It gave me the always helpful error code of “3-013”. Googling this code told me that (of course) the reader was already authorised (presumably to the person who bought it the first time).

I contacted Sony’s only means of support, which was a web form on their site. Hours later, I received a response telling me that I needed to call their support line, which was open until 6PM. Naturally this email arrived at 5:58PM, and the support line kindly informed me that I should call back the next day. I think their time calculation function must suffer from some floating point inaccuracy.

Cursing my now apparently totally useless $300 device, I decided to read a free ebook to tide me over until I could call Sony the next day. I’m a regular boing boing reader and remembered your posts on Little Brother, so I downloaded it and started reading.

Needless to say, not only did I really enjoy reading it (and yes I know it’s nominally a book for kids!) but I’ve yet to make that call to authorise my device, and I’ve been reading more Creative Commons-licensed books.

So long story short, DRM turned me onto Little Brother and onto other CC-licensed works. I thought you might find that amusing.

Regards,
Cam Dunn

PS Nice work making Little Brother technically accurate in so many ways (ignoring the “near future” technologies). I get the impression that you’d lose your tech-savvy kid readers these days if you didn’t get that stuff so right.

The Libertarian Futurist Society has released its slate of nominees for this year’s Prometheus Awards, the award for the best “pro-freedom” science fiction of the year. I’m proud to say that my novel Little Brother made the cut, as did five other standout books, including a couple personal favorites: Half a Crown by Jo Walton and Saturn’s Children by Charlie Stross.

* Matter, by Iain Banks (Orbit Books) – Part of Banks’ series of far-future space operas about the Culture, a utopia which reflects Banks’ interest in anarchism through its avoidance of the use of force except when necessary for protection and defense. The novel focuses on an agent in Special Circumstances, the Culture’s special forces unit, who returns to her home planet, a “shellworld” with multiple layers of habitation, after her father has been killed in a coup.

* Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (TOR Books) – A cautionary tale about a high-school student and his friends who are rounded up in the hysteria following a terrorist attack, the novel focuses on how people find the courage to respond to oppression.

* The January Dancer, by Michael Flynn (TOR Books) -The classic space opera, set in an interstellar civilization created by a wide-ranging human diaspora, revolves around how discovery of a an alien relic sends agents of a multisystem federation on a quest that exposes them to political and economic institutions of many different cultures and requires them to deal with threats to freedom, from piracy to political corruption.

* Saturn’s Children, by Charles Stross (Ace Books) -A robot’s adventures after all the humans in a society have died raises complex issues of ethics, duty, family and struggle in this Heinlenesque novel.

* Opening Atlantis, by Harry Turtledove (Penguin/Roc Books) – Set in a world where medieval Europeans discover an island continent in the Atlantic Ocean, this first novel in a new atternate-history series explores the politics of colonization and the struggle for self-determination while offering parallels and contrasts with development of the Americas.

* Half a Crown, by Jo Walton (TOR Books) -The sequel to Walton’s Prometheus Award-winning Ha’penny concludes her alternative-history trilogy, set two decades after Britain reached accommodation with Hitler’s Germany in the 1940s, with a chilling portrait of people all too willing to trade freedom for security.

2009 PROMETHEUS AWARDS FINALISTS ANNOUNCED

Hot damn! The 2009 Hugo Awards ballot is live and it’s a doozy, and not just because I’m on it twice (Best Novel: Little Brother and Best Novella: True Names, with Ben Rosenbaum). No, it’s better than that — the entire ballot is just killer, especially my competition in the Best Novel category (hell, three quarters of the authors were invited to my wedding, and I’d have been delighted to have the remaining one in attendance). A million thanks to all of you who nominated both works!

I can’t wait to see who wins (and no matter who wins, I can’t wait for the annual Hugo Losers party, which is bound to be a hell of a thing and a half). I’m going to the WorldCon for the awards, of course — my tux is hanging in its dry-cleaning bag awaiting its annual airing.

And hey, look at that, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who edited Little Brother, is also up for Best Editor!

Best Novel
* Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
* The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
* Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK) — Free download
* Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
* Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Novella
* “The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
* “The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF Aug 2008) – Read Online
* “The Tear” by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
* “True Names” by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2) — Free download
* “Truth” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)

Best Novelette
* “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Jan 2008) — Read Online
* “The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2) — Read Online
* “Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
* “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner (Asimov’s Feb 2008) — Read Online
* “Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s Mar 2008) — Read Online

Best Short Story

* “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Jul 2008) — Read Online
* “Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick (Baen’s Universe Oct 2008)
* “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
* “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
* “From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s Feb 2008)

Another thing about this ballot — it’s the copyfightingest ballots in my memory, filled with writers and editors who advocate for sharing, fanfic, and looser copyrights.

Hugos 2009

The Nebula Ballot for best sf/f book of 2008 is up — and I’m on it!

Little Brother – Doctorow, Cory (Tor, Apr08)
Powers – Le Guin, Ursula K. (Harcourt, Sep07)
Cauldron – McDevitt, Jack (Ace, Nov07)
Brasyl – McDonald, Ian (Pyr, May07)
Making Money – Pratchett, Terry (Harper, Sep07)
Superpowers – Schwartz, David J. (Three Rivers Press, Jun08)

Nebula Awards® 2008 Final Ballot

It’s time again for Locus Magazine’s annual public poll of the best works in science fiction for the preceding year, with the winners taking home the prestigious Locus Awards. I’ve been privileged to win several of these awards, and they’re among the highest honors I’ve ever been paid. The Locus Awards are open to the general public, and attract more voting participation than any other award in the field.

I’m on the ballot again this year, three times: Little Brother (Best Young Adult), The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away (Best Novelette) and True Names (with Benjamin Rosenbaum, Best Novella). Looking at this year’s nominees, it’s clear that I’m in damned good company.

Happy voting!

2009 Locus Poll and Survey Ballot

(via Charlie Stross)

A couple weeks ago, I posted to let you know that nominations for the Hugo awards had just opened — and promised to re-post once the online nomination form went live. I’ve just noticed that it’s up — handy if you want to save the hassle of printing out the form and putting it in the mail!

Here’s the original post:

The 2008 Hugo award nominations have opened — if you were a member of the 2008 WorldCon in Denver, or have bought a membership to the 2009 WorldCon in Montreal, you’re eligible to nominate. I’ll be sending in my nominations this week, and just in case you were wondering, here’s the stuff I wrote that’s eligible for this year’s ballot:

* Best novel: Little Brother, Tor, 2008
* Best related book: Content, Tachyon, 2008
* Best novella: True Names (with Benjamin Rosenbaum), published in Fast Forward, Pyr Books, 2008, edited by Lou Anders
* Best novelette: The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, Tor.com, July 2008

Nominating Ballot for the 2009 Hugo Awards
and John W. Campbell Award

The 2008 Hugo award nominations have opened — if you were a member of the 2008 WorldCon in Denver, or have bought a membership to the 2009 WorldCon in Montreal, you’re eligible to nominate. I’ll be sending in my nominations this week, and just in case you were wondering, here’s the stuff I wrote that’s eligible for this year’s ballot:

* Best novel: Little Brother, Tor, 2008
* Best related book: Content, Tachyon, 2008
* Best novella: True Names (with Benjamin Rosenbaum), published in Fast Forward, Pyr Books, 2008, edited by Lou Anders
* Best novelette: The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, Tor.com, July 2008

No matter what you plan on nominate, I urge you to send in your form! Hugo participation seems to dwindle every year. The present form’s just a PDF, but they’re promising a web-based one shortly (I’ll post again when it’s live).

Hugos

I’m off on my family holiday and won’t be back until 2009, so I wanted to drop one last post in the queue for the wild and wooly 2008 — a year that was busy and wonderful and that ended a little scarily. We moved continents and had a baby; I wrote two books and published three; went on a book tour and spent a month in Asia researching the next book; and to top it all off, got married three times on two continents (to the same woman!).

It’s been a fantastic year, thanks to you folks. It’s been an especially great year for me, writing-wise. The UK edition of Little Brother, my first young adult novel, is selling briskly, and the US edition is doing spectacularly, having just gone on to an eighth hardcover printing (the hardcover’s selling so well that my publisher’s delayed the paperback for a year!). The book’s made just about everyone’s best-of lists for 2008: the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review, School Library Journal, Amazon Editors’ Picks, Amazon top teen books, Richie’s Picks, Book Sense, VOYA, TeenReads, Texas Library Association, io9 — not to mention a whopping haul of awards and award-nominations: Emperor Norton Award, ALA’s YALSA Award, Cybils Award, Prometheus Award, Ontario Library Association White Pine Award, the ALA Printz Award and the Nebula Award! My agents are doing some serious talking with a film studio (though nothing’s ever final until it’s signed and delivered), and there are more overseas publishers signing up every month to do their own editions.

Best of all is all the fan-stuff — videos, art, readings, translations, adaptations… All the stuff that takes advantage of the Creative Commons license to remake Little Brother to better suit the readers (and man, do I get awesome email from readers, from security researchers at Microsoft to activist students in rural schools). And of course, I was floored by the generosity of the donors who sent hundreds of copies of the book to libraries, schools, halfway houses, and shelters as a way of saying thanks for the CC license.

Who the hell knows what’ll happen in 2009? It’s definitely the most uncertain new year I can remember. One thing I’m sure of, though, is that whatever happens, we’ll all figure it out together, that the Internet will make it possible for us to bug-in and help each other here at home, rather than heading for a defensive position in the hills. Crappy economies are often the home of wonderful Bohemias. Two recessions ago, I dropped out of school to become a computer programmer. In the last one, I quit the company I’d co-founded and went to work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Now that I’m a parent — and now that I’m a little older — I feel the risk a lot more keenly than I did then. But I just keep on remembering that we live in the best time in the history of the world to have a worst time: the time when collective action is cheaper and easier than ever, the time when more information and better access to tools, ideas and communities are at our fingertips than they’ve ever been.

Have a fantastic holiday. Remind the people who matter to you of that fact. Ring in the new year with a big grin, and I’ll see you all in 2009.