The question of whether Marcus should release the leaked data is a genuine moral dilemma. The book’s central concern is what civil society should look like in a world where more and more information about citizens is available to the state.
Locus magazine has just released its 2012 Recommended Reading List of science fiction/fantasy/horror, which is always a great reading guide (and a fabulous resource for those of us nominating for the Hugo awards. I’m delighted to see my novel Pirate Cinema and Rapture of the Nerds (written with Charlie Stross) on the best novel list!
Novels – Science Fiction
*
The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
*
Bowl of Heaven, Gregory Benford & Larry Niven (Tor)
*
Any Day Now, Terry Bisson (Overlook; Duckworth ’13)
*
Blueprints of the Afterlife, Ryan Boudinot (Black Cat)
*
Arctic Rising, Tobias S. Buckell (Tor)
*
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
*
Intruder, C.J. Cherryh (DAW)
*
Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
*
The Rapture of the Nerds, Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross (Tor)
*
The Eternal Flame, Greg Egan (Night Shade; Gollancz)
*
Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway (Heinemann; Knopf)
*
Empty Space, M. John Harrison (Gollancz; Night Shade ’13)
*
Rapture, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade)
*
Intrusion, Ken MacLeod (Orbit UK)
*
In the Mouth of the Whale, Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
*
Fate of Worlds, Larry Niven & Edward M. Lerner (Tor)
*
The Fractal Prince, Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz; Tor)
*
Blue Remembered Earth, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Ace)
*
Jack Glass, Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
*
2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
*
Turing & Burroughs, Rudy Rucker (Transreal)
*
Redshirts, John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz)
*
Ashes of Candesce, Karl Schroeder (Tor)
*
Lost Everything, Brian Francis Slattery (Tor)
*
Slow Apocalypse, John Varley (Ace)
*
The Fourth Wall, Walter Jon Williams (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
*
The Last Policeman, Ben Winters (Quirk)
I’ve always enjoyed the pluckiness of his characters, the relentless pace of the plots, the way Doctorow is able to grasp the Zeitgeist by the scruff and extract a ripping good story from it. These books speed along as smoothly and rapidly as a bullet train. They’re both entertaining and empowering. While he’s otherwise as different from Pratchett as can be, he’s similar in that both authors disguise their social commentary as genre fiction and get away with it.
In this rousing sequel to Little Brother, Marcus has gone to college, dropped out, and is looking for a job—no easy task in this near-future America’s worsening recession. While attending the spectacular Burning Man festival, Marcus and his girlfriend run into Masha, a secret agent he met three years earlier; she hands him a data stick filled with governmental and corporate dirty secrets, telling him to release it if she disappears. Immediately thereafter, she is kidnapped by Carrie Johnstone, the über-competent mercenary who is determined to reacquire the data stick and protect her clients. Returning to San Francisco, Marcus finds his dream job working for an honest politician and must decide whether to make public the explosive data, while dodging Johnstone and her goons.
Nominations are open again for science fiction’s Hugo Awards — if you attended last year’s WorldCon or have supported/bought a membership for this year’s con, you get a vote. There’s a lively LJ group discussing potential nominees (I often wait for the annual Locus Magazine best-of list to use as a crib for my nominations). My own eligible works are two novels: Pirate Cinema and Rapture of the Nerds (with Charles Stross), both from Tor Books. Here’s Charlie Stross’s list of eligible works, and here’s a wider list instigated by John Scalzi. Feel free to leave your favorites (or own eligible works) in the comments here.
