Thread by @doctorow

During this month's uprisings, I've heard from hundreds of people who wrote to tell me that they're reminded of my novels Little Brother and Homeland, books in which youth-led uprising meet overwhelming, militarized force and high-tech surveillance.

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Often, people praise me for some kind of prescience in writing these books; but as with so much science fiction, what looks like prediction is actually observation. Cops have been ratcheting up surveillance and militarization for longer than I've been writing.

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I find this trend every bit as alarming as you do. The closer I observe it, the more worried I become, especially as the private sector becomes more and more central to the totalitarian project .

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At that point, you're not just fighting systemic racism and paranoia in law enforcement. Private sector procurements turn that into a chimera where gladhanding commissioned salesfores offer junkets, massages, cash and gear to cops who buy spy tech.

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They recruit sports stars as spokespeople (and offer them shares in the company):

eff.org/deeplinks/2019…

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Their billionaire owners threaten reporters who disclose their role in helping governments violate human rights and use attack lawyers to secure misleading "retractions."

theguardian.com/law/2019/jun/1…

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Periodically this boils over and I write a new Little Brother. The next one, Attack Surface, is about a spy-tech hacker who realizes she's been on the wrong side of things when her friend's Oakland BLM chapter is targeted by the tools she developed.

read.macmillan.com/promo/attacksu…

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In anticipation of that release, on Jul 7, @torbooks is publishing an omnibus edition of Little Brother and Homeland, which @snowden - who knows firsthand what it means to switch from spying on people to defending them from spying - wrote an amazing intro for.

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My local sf/horror/fantasy bookstore, @darkdel, is offering signed, personalized copies of the book, which you can preorder here:

darkdel.com/store/p1750/Ju…

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They're hanging in there, despite having been kicked out of their home of 25 years by a greedy landlord (who still hasn't managed to rent their old space, and may he lose his shirt), and despite the pandemic. I'm so pleased to be able to find a way to support them.

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Dark Delicacies is also offering personalized, signed copies of my first picture book, Poesy the Monster Slayer, which comes out the next week:

pluralistic.net/2020/06/04/cro…

eof/