Title: The TestAuthor: Sylvain Neuvel
First Published: February 12, 2019
Publisher: Tordotcom
Pages: 112
Genre: Dystopia, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Technothriller
Format: Paperback
Source: Library
Rating:
Synopsis:
Britain, the not-too-distant future.
Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test.
He wants his family to belong.
Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress.
When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death.
How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?
Review
I picked this novella up on a whim after seeing commentary that it is like an episode of Black Mirror, one of my all-time favorite shows. This little novella was one of the absolute best pieces of speculative fiction I’ve ever had the joy of reading. It’s short, around 100 pages, and I read it in one sitting, it was so hard to put down! I went in blind, only knowing that the story is about a citizenship test and frankly, I think knowing as little as possible is the best way to enter this story.
Idir is a charming character, and I appreciated the commentary about the useless history questions that often makeup citizenship tests, I helped my mother and grandmother study for theirs so the jabs at these tests made me chuckle. Nothing could have prepared me for that first big turn, even though it was noted right on the synopsis. This story was honestly so stressful to read and reduced me to tears, it was an absolute gut punch of a story. Despite the small page count the story covers a lot of ground about morality, social biases and conditioning, race, religion, sexism, and the ethics of gamification and the use of technology in behavioral testing. Absolutely outstanding.
Quote
“The goal of the values assessment is not the selection of model human beings, but of model citizens. This means the test should favour homogeneity, not atypical attitudes, no matter how commendable they may be.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Sylvain Neuvel
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).
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