Janet Silver’s rookie season as a literary agent with Zachary Shuster Harmsworth continues, as the former editor and publisher has sold a book to Doubleday about artificial intelligence and the human mind by 24-year-old Brown grad Brian Christian.

The book will follow Mr. Christian’s efforts to “train” for the 2009 Loebner Prize, an annual competition to be held in September that aims to instantiate the Turing Test by asking judges to interact with a set of human beings and computers and then deduce which is which. (Mr. Christian will be one of the humans.) The grand prize is awarded to whoever builds the computer least easily distinguishable from a human being in its ability to respond to the judges’ prompts.

A separate prize honors the person whose responses are most often taken as human by judges. This is the prize that Mr. Christian is going for.

According to Ms. Silver, the contest is really just an occasion for the book, which she said will be a broad and rigorous inquiry into what makes us human. Mr. Christian’s training, Ms. Silver said, will consist of interviews with various people professionally involved with artificial intelligence and communication.

Mr. Christian, who graduated from Brown University in 2006 with a dual degree in computer science and philosophy of mind and has since received an MFA in poetry, has written essays in literary magazines such as AGNI as well as scientific papers in journals like Cognitive Science. He will be edited at Doubleday by Bill Thomas, who acquired rights to the book for an undisclosed sum after a best bid auction that included six other bidders.

On its face, Mr. Christian’s book deal bears some resemblance to the rather famous one that Elyse Cheney procured for Joshua Foer back in 2006 shortly after the author graduated from Yale. For that book, which has not yet been published, Mr. Foer was going to write about the experience of training for the USA National Memory Championship.

Also, we're sensing an unmistakable trend involving young literary scientists: not six months ago, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt acquired the rights to recent Harvard grad James Weatherall’s Send Physics, Math, and Money!, a book about how early physicists and mathematicians helped create the models at the foundations of our economy.

Janet Silver is moving from Houghton Mifflin to Nan Talese's imprint at Doubleday. Leon Neyfakh checks in with with Ms. Talese who says, "I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually." That list may include Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer. Plus: Islam observers on Wieseltier's Amis review; James Frey's PR Dream Team; Spitzer's bio; Nabokov's unfinished novel.

Doree Shafrir watches Lifetime and finds that, "the network has managed to replace its formerly interchangeable, and wholly forgettable, slate of made-for-TV movies with fare that’s based on trade-fiction women’s-book-group staples, like the very successful broadcast of Kim Edwards’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter."

Also in this issue: Frank McCourt prefers bars to blogs; Tom Brokaw's bison; Salman Rushdie goes to the mat for David Mamet; Ana Marie Cox on Arianna Huffington's latest book: and will The Economist move way down town?

Back in January, Ms. Silver and several other editors at Houghton Mifflin were made redundant as part of the company’s merger with Harcourt.

But Ms. Silver and Ms. Talese may have the better end of the stick: The author list Ms. Silver built at Houghton, which included Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer, did not play a small role in Ms. Talese’s desire to recruit her.

“I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually,” Ms. Talese said. “We ran down the financials and ... we made an agreement with her that she would stay up there in Massachusetts. It was all done in a rather good fashion.”

So far, Ms. Silver has formally moved three of her authors to her new list at Doubleday: Monique Truong, Peter Ho Davies and John Pipkin. That leaves about a dozen more, all of whom, according to Ms. Silver, could still end up following her to Doubleday.

That means Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer are in play. Mr. Foer, according to Ms. Silver, couldn’t think of changing houses when she got her job because he’d just turned in the manuscript for his forthcoming nonfiction book about vegetarianism. After that one is published, Mr. Foer will only owe Harcourt Houghton Mifflin one more book: a Passover Haggadah. After that, he’ll be free to find a new publisher. And Mr. Roth, who only signs contracts for one book at a time, will be a free agent after his next book, Indignation, comes out this September; according to Ms. Silver, he is already working on a new novel.

Ms. Talese has put in a call to Mr. Roth’s agent, Andrew Wylie, and told him the author was welcome at her imprint.

It would be a natural move, Ms. Talese explained to Pub Crawl Monday. "When I was first in publishing I was a line editor on Philip's first and second novels. He knows me and I know him and he knows [her journalist husband] Gay. So it's just up to him. Things change so quickly in publishing."

Ms. Talese has reason to be optimistic: when she left Houghton Mifflin for Doubleday in 1988, she was allowed to bring all her authors-including Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan-- with her. The fact that Houghton Mifflin, once a beloved, ambitious literary house, has been all but dismantled as a result of the Harcourt merger, suggests that authors will be even more eager to jump ship now than they were when Ms. Talese went through this twenty years ago.

At Houghton, Ms. Silver edited books by Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Jonathan Safran Foer, and a score of other well-known writers. Many in the publishing industry were dismayed when news of her ouster broke. 

In a statement from Doubleday issued this morning, Ms. Talese is quoted as saying, “Over the course of her distinguished career, Janet has nurtured an impressive array of talented writers, providing them the level of support and care their work so richly deserved... Her now joining our imprint is such a natural match, and I am thrilled to welcome her as a colleague.”

Janet Silver, meanwhile, is out as vice president and publisher of Houghton Mifflin. She'd been with the company for 24 years, according to HM publicity director Lori Glazer, and spent seven of those as publisher of adult trade.

The shake-up comes as a result of Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep's acquisition of Harcourt's trade and education divisions, which was announced last summer and completed in December.

Ms. Silver follows soon-to-be-former Harcourt Trade president and CEO Dan Farley out the door; Mr. Farley will vacate his post at the end of the month, he told Media Mob over the phone this afternoon, leaving Gary Gentel, who was previously the acting president of Houghton Mifflin trade and reference, at the helm of the newly merged company.

The press release from HMH about Ms. Saletan's appointment reproduced after the jump.

Becky Saletan Named Senior Vice President, Publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Adult Trade Books

Gary Gentel, President of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Trade & Reference Division, announced today that Becky Saletan has been appointed Senior Vice President, Publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Adult Trade Books.

In this expanded role, Saletan will direct all Houghton and Harcourt Adult Trade publishing, which includes both adult lines, the trade paperback programs, field guides and cookbooks. She brings a wealth of experience to this position, having served as Publisher of Harcourt Trade since 2006, and prior to that Editor-in-Chief of the imprint since 2004. Saletan began her career at Yale University Press and spent time at Random House and S&S; prior to Harcourt, she was Editorial Director at FSG's North Point Press.

Says Gentel, "There's an exciting future ahead for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Adult Books with Becky Saletan at its helm. Highly regarded in the industry, Becky brings an innovative sensibility to publishing that will be important to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt as we continue what we do well, and look for ways to expand our programs in bold new directions."

The shake-up comes as a result of Houghton Mifflin's acquisition of Harcourt, which was finalized last month.

More details to come.