Tag Archives: fandom

Persian translation of Little Brother

Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite authors, and Little Brother is one of the main reasons why.

The novel is a fantastic depiction of what can happen when teenagers decide to fight back against an oppressive system.

Seriously, pick it up if you haven’t yet and hand it off to a teenager after you’ve read it.

But this post isn’t a review. It’s about the newest fan translation.

It’s finally made it into Persian and is available for free online!

A group of people (who are pretty vague on identities) got together to hire a translator with the intent to get this story into the hands of Iranian online activists.

The book encourages people to stand up and fight for the right to free speech and privacy and non-oppressive systems. It’s set in the U.S. but easily applicable anywhere people feel like it could fit.

So check out their site, spread the word, and donate money to cover translation costs.

I love this book , and if anyone reading it, no matter what country they live in, sees a way they can use to speak out against systems designed to oppress people – I think the entire system will consistently run better.

Bookmark Persian translation of Little Brother

Little, Brown Podcast Novel

I couldn’t sleep this morning. It may have been the fire alarm that lacked a fire that went off at my friend’s place at 5:45am. I guess beggars can’t be choosers when they’re in hitchhikking mode…

While I was trying to go back to sleep, Scott Sigler tweeted that Little, Brown had invented podcast novels on 23 July 2009. From the article:

“Sarah Shrubb, editorial director of Hachette Digital, said: ‘This is the first time an audio has been serialised in this way, and we’re very excited to be doing something so groundbreaking.'”

What makes this statement really impressive is the fact that Sigler and many others (Mur Lafferty, J.C. Hutchins, James Melzer, Mark Jeffrey to name a very few) have been making at least a part (and for several it’s a large part) of their living off their podcast novels for years now…

And they have very devoted fans who almost instanteously came down hard on the comments for the article decrying the lies put forth.

To be completely fair, the article was not on the publisher’s website, and the quote came from the editor and not the author. And I guess it might be a first for Little, Brown (though I haven’t done any research on that, and I’m not very familar with their publications), which is something that should be celebrated. Readers familar with the new territory techonology has opened should encourage traditional publishers taking steps into this unfamilar territory because they are making some effort to adjust to the new ways they could be engaging readers and publishing books.

And with any first steps, there are bound to be some falls. This first step, because of the quote that accompanies it, seems like this might be one of Little, Brown’s falls. Which is a little sad, since the community they are attemtping to enter is rather brutal and unforgiving of mistakes easily avoided by a simple Google search.

I hope Little, Brown’s stumble and the reader reaction doesn’t prevent them, or other publishers, from attempting this kind of new step again.