Tor.com Publishing Senior Editor Lee Harris has acquired author and linguist Sylvain Neuvel’s new novella The Test, a thrilling, timely exploration of a dystopian near future where the road to citizenship is harrowing—and carries a price.
Said the author:
I’m thrilled to be working with Tor.com Publishing to bring The Test to readers. It’s a story that comes from a visceral place and I hope it resonates with people and sparks conversation. I wrote it at a time where I felt particularly vulnerable to the current political climate. There seemed to be nowhere to escape. Somehow, that feeling of being trapped in a world gone mad turned into The Test. I can’t wait to share it.
Sylvain Neuvel dropped out of high school at age 15. Along the way, he has been a journalist, worked in soil decontamination, sold ice cream in California, and peddled furniture across Canada. He received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Chicago. He taught linguistics in India, and worked as a software engineer in Montreal. He is also a certified translator, though he wishes he were an astronaut. He likes to tinker, dabbles in robotics and is somewhat obsessed with Halloween.
He absolutely loves toys; his girlfriend would have him believe that he has too many, so he writes about aliens and giant robots as a blatant excuse to build action figures (for his son, of course). He is the author of the Themis Files series: Sleeping Giants (“one of the most promising series kickoffs in recent memory”—NPR), Waking Gods (“In a word: unputdownable.” –Kirkus) and Only Human (“Two (giant, robotic) thumbs up!” –Kirkus).
The Test will be available from Tor.com Publishing in 2019.