Torn

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This trilogy began as an argument.

A series of arguments, actually, over the course of a seminar in the history of mechanical life. I signed up expecting to watch a few Terminator movies but instead found myself arguing about the nature of humanity, the definition of thought, the value of emotion, and the ever-shifting boundary between man and machine. You could call this trilogy my final paper. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my professor, M. Norton Wise, and fellow students—especially Sameer Shah and Naamah Akavia—for raising more questions and debates than could be answered in a one-semester seminar. Also for putting up with me, which was no easy task.

And in the category of “this trilogy could not have existed without” are the ridiculously talented writers Holly Black, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Erin Downing, Maureen Johnson, Justine Larbalestier, Leslie Margolis, Carolyn MacCullough, and Scott Westerfeld, who read drafts, paved over plotholes, shared in my neuroses, buoyed my spirits, and did their best to keep me reasonably sane. Thanks also to my agent, Barry Goldblatt, who’s usually the one stuck dealing with me when the whole “reasonably sane” thing doesn’t work out.

A million and one thank-yous to Jennifer Klonsky, Bethany Buck, Emilia Rhodes, Lucille Rettino, Bess Braswell, Paul Crichton, Anna McKean, Cara Petrus, and the rest of the Simon Pulse team, who put everything they had into these books and, for the last six years, have demonstrated an amazing Martha Stewart–like ability to turn a publishing house into a home.

Thank you to Sherry and Jim McGlynn for handing me my first science-fiction novel (not to mention bribing eleven-year-old me with ice cream to sit through the entire showing of 2001), and thanks to Brandon McGlynn for adding some science to my fiction.

And one final thank-you to Isaac Asimov. If you’ve read his books, you know why.

If you haven’t, start with I, Robot.

(Start now.)