Corrinne Hite is a fifteen-year-old singer/songwriter who has just finished an album of songs based on the novels she loves. She’s done me the honor of writing a song based on my novel Little Brother: stream it here.

Corrine’s band, CORY & THE TIGERMEN, is in the SchoolJamsUSA finals (northeast region). US residents can vote for her — she’d have my vote if I was eligible!

The Argentine sf zine Axxón has produced a Spanish noncommercial fan-translation of my novel Little Brother, using Argentine idiom.

En esta historia se utilizan muchos términos relacionados con la informática y la tecnología de las comunicaciones. Estimo que los lectores de Axxón están familiarizados con casi todos en su idioma original, el inglés; por este motivo y porque las traducciones al castellano de esos términos difieren según el país del que se trate, tomé la decisión de dejar los más comunes sin traducir. En cuanto a la terminología poco frecuente, en algunos casos el autor explica a qué se refiere y en otros incluí aclaraciones mías insertadas en el texto, esto último teniendo en cuenta que Cory Doctorow ha autorizado explícitamente cualquier modificación de esta obra que apunte a su mejor comprensión, ya que ha sido escrita con una intención específica que el propio autor expresa en la Introducción.

“Hermano menor” (Introducción y Capítulo 1), Cory Doctorow

(Image: Ilustración para la novela “Hermano menor”, Valeria Uccelli)

Update: I’ve just heard from Eduardo Hojman, my editor at Puck, that the Spanish edition of Little Brother will be published on March 7, under the title, “PEQUEÑO HERMANO”! It’ll be distributed worldwide — through Spain and Latin America.

Neale sez, “I liked Little Brother so much that I bought a copy for my niece and then based an entire Summer Hacking School around it. The kids were really excited about the premise of the book when I explained it to them tonight, and the fact that it’s available for free in so many
formats was just gravy. I put ePub and j2me versions on 5 mobile phones before they left for the night.”

Sam Ruff translated Little Brother into Pig Latin!

I’mway away eniorsay atway Esarcay Avezchay ighhay inway Ansay
Ancisco’sfray unnysay Issionmay istrictday, andway atthay
akesmay emay oneway ofway ethay ostmay urveilledsay eoplepay
inway ethay orldway. Ymay amenay isway Arcusmay Allowyay, utbay
ackbay enwhay isthay orystay artsstay, Iway asway oinggay ybay
way1nay5tay0nay. Onouncedpray “Instonway.”

*Otnay* onouncedpray “Oubleday-ouyay-oneway-ennway-ivefay-eetay-
erozay-ennway” — unlessway ou’reyay away uelessclay
isciplinaryday officerway o’swhay arfay enoughway ehindbay ethay
urvecay atthay ouyay illstay allcay ethay Internetway “ethay
informationway uperhighwaysay.”

Iway owknay ustjay uchsay away uelessclay ersonpay, andway ishay
amenay isway Edfray Ensonbay, oneway ofway eethray icevay-
incipalspray atway Esarcay Avezchay. E’shay away uckingsay
estchay oundway ofway away umanhay eingbay. Utbay ifway ou’reyay
oinggay otay avehay away ailerjay, etterbay away uelessclay
oneway anthay oneway o’swhay eallyray onway ethay allbay.

Jeannie Harrell, a student at Emerson College, was assigned to create a book jacket and interior for a course on book design. Because my novel Little Brother is available under a Creative Commons license, she was able to grab the text and do a new interior, as well as designing and publishing her own (outstanding!) cover. I really like what she came up with. Even if CC didn’t sell more books for me (which it seems to be doing!), I’d still use the licenses, because this kind of thing really, really makes me happy.

Little Brother

Bruce M Campbell created a lovely alternative PDF of Little Brother:

I took the HTML version, ran some type-cleaning things on it, and restyled it using, of all things, Apple’s Pages 8. I thought about using Adobe InDesign, but as my intention was to produce this as a PDF, thought that ID would be over-kill.

I’ve styled it as I thought it appropriate to the subject matter and the fonts I have on my system.

I’ve used Rockwell for the the Chapter titles and heads as I think the sardonicness of the “All-American” feel covers the “on-message” hypocrisy of the overall government policy here, and Minion Pro for the body, because I think it’s a very readable font, and the innate typography, especially with the punctuation characters, makes it disappear for the reader. For novelty, I’ve used Orator for the IM texts, and ITC AMerican Typewriter for the literary extracts.

David sez, “Yahoo Group’s Hard SF group chose Little Brother as the book to read and discuss in December. I could not read the ‘dead tree’ edition, as I’m visually impaired. I took advantage of your Creative Commons license, and generated MP3 files from the .txt file. The synthetic voice is one of the better ones, however to limit the file sizes I created them at 64Kbs. At that rate the voice is on the flat side, but not ‘computer sounding’. I posted the files to archive.org.”

Fantastic! And just a reminder, there’s a remixable, DRM-free audiobook from Random House Audio available here.

Jenyce sez, “I am a 14 yr. old (lucky me) and I’m in high school (land of book projects), and I decided to do a project on your book. Our project is to pretend that we are the main character, and make a scrapbook. We have to make it, as if we were the main character, and guess what the character would put in it. Heck, I don’t think Marcus would be one to even think about making a scrapbook…but IF he did I’d would have to make it. One of the items I decided to put in mine, was the newspaper heading of the story that Barbara wrote (It’s displayed as if it was ripped out of the paper)…I had to make it, so I did it on the computer (photoshop is a wonderful thing)”

I think this totally rocks. Jenyce has a future in photoshopping!

Update: Here’s some more of Jenyce’s art:

H4r0n T43k made this great, Little-Brother-inspired video explaining how to anonymize your photos, so that they can’t be traced to your camera.

PMOG — the Passively Multiplayer Online Game — has two missions for Little Brother. PMOG is a game you play by scavenger-hunting the web, while your browser keeps track of where you go and what you do. It lets you lay traps for other players and score points by luring them in. One of the missions (How I Read Little Brother) was created by my friend Justin Hall, who co-founded PMOG, and the other (Why read Little Brother?) was created by a fan, Treekyte. Both seem like a lot of fun!