GREAT BRITAIN

I'm a Canadian, and I've lived in lots of places (including San Francisco, the setting for Little Brother), and now I love in London, England, with my wife Alice and our little daughter, Poesy. I've lived here (off and on) for five years now, and though I love it to tiny pieces, there's one thing that's always bugged me: my books aren't available here. Some stores carried them as special items, imported from the USA, but it wasn't published by a British publisher.

That's changed! HarperCollins UK has bought the British rights to this book (along with my next young adult novel, FOR THE WIN), and they're publishing it just a few months after the US edition, on November 17, 2008 (the day after I get back from my honeymoon!).

I'm so glad about this, I could bust, honestly. Not just because they're finally selling my books in my adopted homeland, but because I'm raising a daughter here, dammit, and the surveillance and control mania in this country is starting to scare me bloodless. It seems like the entire police and governance system in Britain has fallen in love with DNAswabbing, fingerprinting and videorecording everyone, on the off chance that someday you might do something wrong. In early 2008, the head of Scotland Yard seriously proposed taking DNA from fiveyearolds who display "offending traits" because they'll probably grow up to be criminals. The next week, the London police put up posters asking us all to turn in people who seem to be taking pictures of the ubiquitous CCTV spycameras because anyone who pays too much to the surveillance machine is probably a terrorist.

America isn't the only country that lost its mind this decade.

Britain's right there in the nuthouse with it, dribbling down its shirt front and pointing its finger at the invisible bogeymen and screaming until it gets its meds.

We need to be having this conversation all over the planet.

Like I said, the UK edition goes on sale on November 17 (ISBN: 9780007288427).

There'll even be a limited edition, signed hardcover for people who like their books all artifacty.

If you want to be notified when the book goes on sale, just drop me an email at [email protected] with the subject line