The shortlists for Canada’s Sunburst Award for best sf novel have been posted and I’m delighted to find that Little Brother made the young adult list! The prize is announced in September; it’s a juried award (I was honored to win the prize for my first short story collection, A Place so Foreign and Eight More).

Shortlists for the 2009 Sunburst Awards

I’ll be in Chicago on July 9 to see a production of the highly praised theatrical adaptation of my novel Little Brother. The July 9 show is sold out (performances run until July 18), but Bill Massolia, who wrote the play and runs the company, has organized a get-together beforehand. If you’re in Chicago, I’d love to see you and say hi!

Meet Cory Doctorow before the show.
July 9, 5:45pm to 7:00pm.

Jack’s Bar & Grill/404 Wine Bar
2856 North Southport Ave. Chicago
773-404-8400

I love the name of the Wine Bar — though I worry about it being not found.

Jack’s 404

Little Brother, the play

Wouldya lookit that! I’ve won the Libertarian Futurist’s Society’s Prometheus Award for my novel Little Brother! As with all the other awards LB has been up for this year, I’m even more honored by the company I’m in than the award itself; this year’s Prometheus nominees included Charlie Stross’s Saturn’s Children, Matter by Iain Banks, The January Dancer by Michael Flyn, Opening Atlantis by Harry Turtledove, and Half a Crown, the wrenching conclusion to Jo Walton brilliant Farthing/Ha’penny alternate history trilogy. And this year’s Prometheus Hall of Fame winner was Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. These books and these writers are all incredibly humbling company to find oneself among.

The Prometheus will be given out at the WorldCon, and the award includes an actual, no-fooling gold coin. So yes, I’ll be walking around the Montreal Worldcon with a pocket full of gold, don’t tell anyone.

2009 PROMETHEUS AWARDS FINALISTS ANNOUNCED

Pablo from Tor has the details on a cool new promo they’re doing to promote my next book, Makers, which’ll be published in the fall (HarperCollins UK will publish it in the UK, Australia, NZ, and other parts of the commonwealth). Makers tells the story of a group of hardware hackers who fall in with microfinancing venture capitalists and reinvent the American economy after a total economic collapse, and who find themselves swimming with sharks, fighting with gangsters, and leading a band of global techno-revolutionaries. The first 50,000 words of Makers were serialized on Salon some years ago under the title Themepunks.

Starting today around noon (Eastern Standard Tribe, of course), and throughout the rest of the year, Tor.com will be serializing Makers, Cory Doctorow’s upcoming novel, which goes on sale from Tor Books in Novemb er. We’ll be serializing the entirety of the novel, with a new installment every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, until the whole thing is finished, sometime in January 2010. Each installment of Makers will be accompanied by a new illustration by Idiots’Books (idiotsbooks.com), which will interconnect with the other illustrations in the series, and offer limitless possibilities for mixing and matching the illustrations in the series. In a week or so, after we’ve posted a number of tiles, we’ll release a Flash game in which users will be able to re-arrange the illustration tiles on a grid and create their own combination of layouts.

I’m planning on repeating the tribute to booksellers I made with the free release of Little Brother, introducing every section of the serial with a little hymn to some bookstore or other; booksellers are clearly on the side of the angels (I speak as a former bookseller!).

However, I’m doing this one a little differently; rather than write up my favorite booksellers, I’m asking for your favorite bookstores — in the comments for each section of the serial, I’d like you to write up testimonials for your favorite stores. I’ll pick three every week to add to that week’s installments, by way of spreading the love around.

Announcing Cory Doctorow’s Makers on Tor.com

Cory Doctorow’s Makers, Part 1 (of 81)

(Thanks, Pablo!)

Locus Magazine

My new Locus column, “Cheap Facts and the Plausible Premise,” explores what it means for science fiction when the cost of knowing something falls to zero, and when the difference between knowing something can be done and doing it narrows away to nothing.

Tell someone that her car has a chip-based controller that can be hacked to improve gas mileage, and you give her the keywords to feed into Google to find out how to do this, where to find the equipment to do it — even the firms that specialize in doing it for you.

In the age of cheap facts, we now inhabit a world where knowing something is possible is practically the same as knowing how to do it.

This means that invention is now a lot more like collage than like discovery.

Cheap Facts and the Plausible Premise

Diane from the World Science Fiction Convention sez, “Just wanted to drop you a quick note to say that the voting deadline for the Hugo awards is this Friday. Eligible voters must vote online by July 3rd, 23:59PM EST. People should vote as early as possible in case of computer problems and to ensure their ballot is received before the deadline.”

You get a vote if you’re signed up to attend the WorldCon (it’s in Montreal this year). It’s one of the best Hugo ballots I’ve seen in all my years as an sf reader. And yes, I’m eligible twice, once for best novel (Little Brother) and again for best novella (True Names, with Ben Rosenbaum).

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