Sylvain Neuvel | |
|---|---|
 Neuvel at the 2018 Phoenix Comic Fest | |
| Born | 1973 Quebec City, Quebec |
| Occupation | Novelist, Translator |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Genre | Science Fiction |
| Years active | 2010s-present |
| Notable works | The "Themis Files" |
Sylvain Neuvel is a Canadian science fiction writer, known as the author of The Themis Files. He was born in Quebec City and raised in the suburb of L'Ancienne-Lorette.[1] Neuvel was educated at the Université de Montréal and the University of Chicago, and runs his own professional translation agency.[1]
The Themis Files trilogy begins with his debut novel Sleeping Giants. It follows a group of scientists, led by a physicist named Rose Franklin, as they track down and assemble a giant robot of mysterious origins, scattered across the Earth.[2] The idea for Sleeping Giants first came to him when his son asked him to build a toy robot. Not just any toy robot, he wanted one with an extended back story, wanted to know where the robot came from and what it did.[3] The novel is written in an atypical format, laid out in back-and-forth dialogues, journal entries and documentation rather than through traditional narration.[4]
Neuvel first submitted the novel to literary agents in 2014 and received 50 rejections.[1] The novel was published by Del Rey Books in 2016.[1] It began accumulating favourable buzz after Kirkus Reviews published a rave review of the galley copy it had received. The novel, which was a longlisted contender for the 2017 edition of Canada Reads,[5] has been optioned by Sony Pictures for development into a film and was sold for translation into twenty languages.[1][2] It was a finalist for the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Science Fiction,[6] the 2017 Compton Crook Award[7] and for the Concordia University First Book Prize at the 2016 Quebec Writers' Federation Awards.[8]
Neuvel was announced as one of three contributing authors on an upcoming Black Mirror book project. The first book was set to be released in February 2018 and feature a collection of short fiction by each author.[9] However, the project was postponed indefinitely in October 2018.[10]
