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Sunday night, I fly to Chicago to kick off my three-week US book-tour for Little Brother, my new young adult novel. I’ll be stopping in and around Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, San Francisco and (probably) New York. The schedule’s still being firmed up, but Tor (my publisher) is keeping an up-to-the-minute schedule for each appearance. This is my first publisher-financed tour, and I’m incredibly excited! I hope to meet lots of you on the road!
Last week, Canada’s Macleans Magazine ran a great piece on Little Brother — you can get at it through this Lexis-Nexis gateway.
“No, no, Marcus is more aspirational than autobiographical,” laughs Cory Doctorow about the 17-year-old hero of his newest science fiction novel, Little Brother (Fenn). Principled, literate, brave and, above all, technologically savvy, Marcus puts pebbles in his shoes to fool his school’s “gait recognition” software, chats with friends on an IMParanoid messaging program, and takes on the Department of Homeland Security’s Orwellian surveillance system in the name of liberty. “He’s the teen we all would have liked to have been,” says Doctorow, 36, who nevertheless bristles at the thought that Marcus is too unrealistic: “People have said, ‘C’mon, no teenager reads Jane Jacobs’; I read Jane Jacobs when I was a teenager!”
Instructables has just posted the latest installment in its series of HOWTOs inspired by my latest novel, Little Brother, a young adult novel about hacker kids who fight the DHS with technology in order to restore the Bill of Rights to America.
This week, it’s HOWTO build a spice-mister, a low-intensity edible pepper-spray to douse your food with (one of the characters in the book is a serious capsaicin junkie). Being the kind of guy who’d brush his teeth with Tobasco if I could, I love this one.
Putting the spice mister together is not hard. Simply remove the pump, fill with your choice of hot sauce, and put the pump back in.To add a quick burst of intense flavor to your food, hold the mister a few inches above the dish and spray. Repeat until desirable heat is reached.
Keep it away from your face, and never spray at anyone else – capsaicin in the eyes hurts like hell. Pepper spray is nasty, evil stuff and should never, ever be used on anything except food.
Link,
Borderlands Books, San Francisco’s wonderful science fiction bookstore, has offered to free US shipping for signed, inscribed copies of Little Brother. Just order before my in-store appearance on May 22, and they’ll take care of having me sign and personalize your copy. People outside of the US can order, too — but there’s a small charge for shipping, depending on where you live.
Borderlands Books 866 Valencia Ave, San Francisco CA USA 94110 +1 888 893 4008
Instructables has just posted the latest installment in its ongoing series of HOWTOs inspired by my young adult novel Little Brother, which tells the story of a teen underground that uses technology to fight back against surveillance and control.
This week’s HOWTO is “Avoiding Camera Noise Signatures” — AKA, anonymizing your photos before you post them online:
If you take enough images with your digital camera, they can all be compared together and a unique signature can be determined. This means that even when you think that you are posting a photo anonymously to the internet, you are actually providing clues for the government to better tell who you are. The larger the sample size of images they have, the easier it is them to track down images coming from the same camera. Once they know all the images are coming from the same camera, all they then have to do is find that camera and take a picture to confirm it beyond a reasonable doubt.It is important to remove this noise signature so that you cannot be tracked down. I cannot guarantee any of these methods will work beyond the shadow of a doubt because the woman doing research for the government on how to find the signature is very good. I can only promise that this will make their work more difficult.
Tor Books and Expanded Books produced a funny interview/trailer thing for John Scalzi and me in honor of our latest books — he’s bringing out a young adult novel in the Old Man’s Warverse in August called Zoe’s Tale that I’ve read a little from and it’s dynamite!
Here’s the latest Instructables HOWTO to tie in with my young adult novel Little Brother, which tells the story of young geeks who use technology to restore liberty to post-9/11 America.
This week, it’s HOWTO start a flashmob:
Timing is everything
This refers back to the whole participation thing. If your event is spontaneous in nature and just requires people to show up at the same time and do something goofy(say, gather at a subway stop and follow the first bearded person you see as if they were Jesus), they won’t need much time to prepare. The ideal time for this sort of event is at the end of the workday (between 5 and 6PM) during the week as a) the streets are more crowded and b)participants are more available. For whatever reason, Thursdays seem to be most effective.If you are planning something more elaborate, like a Costumed Rampage, you want to give people at least a week to prepare, and preferably two. These events are most effective in heavily populated shopping and tourist areas, so Saturday afternoons work best. Note: these often turn into drunkfests.
It’s timely, smart, relatable, realistic, thought-provoking and fun, and that’s why I strongly believe that readers will be talking about Cory Doctorow’s novel for a very long time.
Random House has produced a wicked audiobook for Little Brother. Like all my work, there’s no DRM on this title, period, and it also comes with permission to take up to 30 minutes and use them in your own remixes! The audiobook is available here, or through this widget, which you can embed in your own pages.
Remember the scene in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress where Manny sketches a structure for an underground organization? Now imagine that, done properly. With X-boxes.
