I’m delighted and honored to announced that my YA novel Little Brother has won the 2009 Sunburst YA award for best Canadian sf novel for kids. The Sunburst is named for Phyllis Gottleib’s first novel, my friend and the “mother of Canadian science fiction,” who died this year, so it’s especially poignant and significant to have won this in 2009. I also won the Sunburst in the adult category for my first short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More.

My sincere thanks to the jury for making this book their choice, and to the donors who make the Sunburst possible.

As part of the ongoing serialization of my forthcoming novel MAKERS, Tor.com has commissioned Idiots’ Books to produce 81 CC-licensed, interlocking illustrations, one for each installment. Periodically, Tor is adding these to a little Flash-toy that lets you rotate and realign the images like tiles (each has edge-elements that matches up with the others). They’ve just put up the 5X5 grid, which I’m finding addictively fun.

Makers Tile Game 5×5

Philcon have just announced that I’ll be a “Special Guest” this year at the con (Nov 20-22, across the state line at The Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cherry Hill, NJ); I’m delighted to be returning. I attended PhilCon annually for several years, but haven’t managed to make it since I moved overseas.

I’m headed to Canada for some speaking gigs in the coming week, in PEI, Ottawa, and Waterloo:

Waterloo: Sat, Sept 26, 2:30-4PM, University of Waterloo, Arts Lecture Hall. Free, open to the public. Sponsored by the Independent Studies Programme, where I’m a Scholar in Virtual Residence.

Ottawa: Mon, Sept 28, 7PM, Ottawa Writer’s Festival, Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities, 314 Saint Patrick Street (at the corner of Cumberland). $15/$10 Student or Senior (Free for Festival Members and Carleton Students)

Charlottetown, PEI: Tues, 30 Sept, Hackfest, $30 for conference registration.

Charlottetown, PEI: Wed, 1 Oct, 8:30-9:30AM, Access 2009, “Copyright vs Universal Access to All Human Knowledge and Groups Without Cost: The State of Play in the Global Copyfight”

I love coming home to Canada, and it’s a delight to be getting out of the usual Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver rut. I’m looking forward to seeing you!

I’m doing a live audio- and text-chat today at 3PM EDT with Internet Evolution’s new IE Radio program. Hope to chat with you!

Cory Doctorow, blogger, Boing Boing

My latest Guardian column, “Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick,” discusses the difficulty of making truly 3D movies (that is, movies that lose something crucial in 2D) in a world where movies need to find a home on 2D small-screens in order to recoup.

Movies, after all, rely on the aftermarket of satellite, broadcast and cable licenses, of home DVD releases and releases to airline entertainment systems and hotel room video-on-demand services – none of which are in 3D. If the movie couldn’t be properly enjoyed in boring old 2D, the economics of filmmaking would collapse. So no filmmaker can afford to make a big-budget movie that is intended as a 3D-only experience, except as a vanity project.

What’s more, no filmmaker can afford to make a small-budget 3D movie, either, because the cinema-owners who’ve shelled out big money to retrofit their auditoriums for 3D projection don’t want to tie up their small supply of 3D screens with art-house movies. They especially don’t want to do this when there’s plenty of competition from giant-budget 3D movies that add in the 3D as an optional adjunct, a marketing gimmick that can be used to draw in a few more punters during the cinematic exhibition window.

I have no doubt that there are brilliant 3D movies lurking in potentia out there in the breasts of filmmakers, yearning to burst free. But I strongly doubt that any of them will burst free. The economics just don’t support it: a truly 3D movie would be one where the 3D was so integral to the storytelling and the visuals and the experience that seeing it in 2D would be like seeing a giant-robots-throwing-buildings-at-each-other blockbuster as a flipbook while a hyperactive eight-year-old supplied the sound effects by shouting “BANG!” and “CRASH!” in your ear.

Why economics condemns 3D to be no more than a blockbuster gimmick

Thanks to Kos Ivantsov for translating my story Scroogled into Ukrainian