★ 08/01/2016
Touching on virtual families, climate change, implanted memories, and more, Weinstein’s debut collection of digital-age sci-fi stories is scary, recognizable, heartbreaking, witty, and absolutely human. In “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” Jim has to shut down a malfunctioning Yang—a humanoid who has been a “Big Brother” to Jim’s adopted daughter for three years. In “The Cartographers,” Adam designs and sells manufactured memories, until he gets so hooked on testing his software that he can no longer tell which memories are his own. “Heartland” shows a Midwest where topsoil is a precious commodity, and when a father loses his job “installing gardens,” he resorts to exploiting the cuteness of his children to make ends meet. In the virtual-driven world of the title story, a couple lose their digital children to a reboot when they download a virus in the “Dark City.” The disturbing and darkly funny “Rocket Night” features parents who gather annually to decide which least-liked child in the elementary school will be launched on a rocket to space. Complete with footnotes from fictional future publications and technology that is just one leap away, this is mind-bending stuff. Weinstein’s collection is full of spot-on prose, wicked humor, and heart. Agent: Leigh Feldman, Leigh Feldman Literary Agency. (Sept.)
A darkly mesmerizing, fearless, and exquisitely written work. Stunning, harrowing, and brilliantly imagined.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven
“Taken together, these stories present a fully-imagined vision of the future which will disturb you, provoke you, and make you feel alive. Weinstein is brilliant, incisive and fearless, and I expect to be reading his work for years to come.”
—Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
“[A] funny, discomfiting, and excellent debut… Even with a cursory reading of current events, it's difficult to deny that Weinstein's new world is the one our children will grow up in, if not the one we are already living in. Don't let anyone tell you these stories aren't real.”
—David Burr Gerrard, Bomb Magazine Online
“Increasingly, genre readers need to be on the lookout for intriguing new work from beyond the traditional SF sources. Alexander Weinstein’s debut collection, Children of the New World, is a great example…. This is lovely work, real science fiction, interested in the near future effect of technological and social changes, and imaginative. Most of the SFnal ideas here are fairly familiar, but treated freshly and in a very contemporary context. The stories are well-written, the characters are believable and affecting, the tone ranges from quite comic to wistful to angry…. This is as fine a debut collection as I’ve seen in some time, and a book to read and celebrate.”
—Rich Horton, Locus
“In Alexander Weinstein’s debut collection, the future is a frightening and familiar place. Weinstein takes our uneasy truce with technology and blows it up, giving us child robots and ice worlds and the dark aftermath of failed revolutions. The collection is nothing short of a gorgeous new cold war, pitting us both with and against the science that threatens to become not-so-fictional every day.”
—Amber Sparks, author of The Unfinished World: And Other Stories
“[Weinstein's] stories look like SF—consider the childless couple living in a virtual-reality community whose child there is wiped out by a computer virus—but read like literary fiction. Calling all fans of Margaret Atwood and Emily St. John Mandel.” —Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
“In each of the gripping stories in Children of the New World, Alexander Weinstein offers a unique glimpse into an unnerving not-so-distant and all-too-possible future. Weinstein explores what-ifs with both wit and sensitivity, and his cautionary tales demand to be read (before it’s too late).”
—Judy Budnitz, author of Nice Big American Baby
“Mind-blowing… In the vein of George Saunders, Rick Bass, and Alex Shakar, Weinstein writes with stirring particularity, unfailing sensitivity, and supercharged imagination, creating nuanced stories harboring a molten core of astutely satirical inquiries. Sparking disquieting thoughts about how vulnerable our brains are to electronic manipulation and how eventually consciousness itself might be colonized by corporate and governmental entities, Weinstein’s brilliantly original, witty, and provocative tales explore the malleability of memory and self, the fragility of intimacy and nature, forging a ravishingly powerful, cautionary vision.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist *STARRED REVIEW*
“Touching on virtual families, climate change, implanted memories, and more, Weinstein’s debut collection of digital-age sci-fi stories is scary, recognizable, heartbreaking, witty, and absolutely human…. This is mind-bending stuff. Weinstein’s collection is full of spot-on prose, wicked humor, and heart.”
—Publishers Weekly *STARRED REVIEW*
“Missing the vague, futuristic dread you feel watching Black Mirror? Weinstein’s eerie sci-fi collection—featuring adopted robot children and the addictive fictional memory industry—fills the void brilliantly.”
—EW.COM “15 Books You Have to Read in September”
“These stories are equally unnerving and tender, and a reminder that what we ultimately long for is human connection.”
—Michele Filgate, Literary Hub “18 Books You Should Read This September”
“[A] breath-catching in your throat collection…. Grab a glass of wine, cancel the meeting tomorrow morning, and settle down with this book. (I mean it, cancel the meeting). You’ll stay up all night reading it, and then cast about for the person you’ll give it too so you can talk to them about it.”
—Judey Kalchik, Things I Know About Bookselling (blog)
“A bold debut collection of speculative short stories…. Weinstein deftly captures technology’s limitations and leaves the reader to ponder the beauty found in the real world’s imperfections. Ultimately, what is most remarkable, and chilling, about many of these stories is their resemblance to our current times.”
—Jessica Pearson, Bookpage
“It’s really fantastic.”
—Liberty Hardy, Book Riot “All the Books” Podcast
“Children of the New World is a nuanced and complex vision of where we as a species might be going — and how, for better and for worse, we're already there.”
—Jason Heller, NPR.ORG
"A darkly comic look at how far people will go to hold on to the devices that are replacing human experience." The Washington Post
"Seductive... the best of Mr. Weinstein’s stories whistle with a cockeyed, formidable intelligence, and he is not afraid to provoke…. At their finest, Mr. Weinstein’s stories contain moments of moral complexity and, even more challenging — and more moving — moments of grace.”
The New York Times
“The timely, nuanced stories in Alexander Weinstein’s Children of the New World are some of the most brilliantly disconcerting fiction in recent memory...As with George Saunders or Ray Bradbury, Weinstein’s satiric ingenuity seldom overpowers his deep compassion for our wayward species....The resulting cautionary tales are superlatively moving and thought-provoking, imbued with disarming pathos and a palpable sense of wonder and loss.”
—David Wright, The Seattle Times
★ 09/15/2016
Weinstein's collection is the most engrossing work of fiction this reviewer has read since Dave Eggers's The Circle. Each story is set in the near future and extrapolates the devastating outcomes of familiar problems with technology or the environment. "Heartland" imagines a world where desperate families, having sold the very soil they need to survive, contemplate dark alternatives. The title story examines the emotional devastation following the collapse of a utopian virtual reality. "Migration" contrasts an unsafe landscape of devastation, with people living a largely home-based, confined digital life, and the sudden discovery of natural beauty. There is also a compelling examination throughout several stories of the intersection of religion and technology, culminating in the wickedly hilarious "The Pyramid and the Ass," which describes a world where procreation has been replaced by digital reincarnation. Using wit and intelligence, each story investigates the negative effects of technology gone awry and the subsequent effect on society. VERDICT Like a prose version of the Netflix series Black Mirror, this volume encapsulates a brave and imaginative examination of possible futures. Highly recommended for all readers. [See Prepub Alert, 3/21/16.]—Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA
2016-06-22
Thirteen stories illuminating the dangers of a tech-obsessed future.In the opening pages of Weinstein's debut collection, a man's son begins acting strangely at the breakfast table, eventually slamming his head into his bowl of cereal. In short order, readers learn that this boy is actually a lifelike android, purchased by the family to act as a kind of cultural liaison and big brother to the couple's youngest child, an adopted girl from China. This story, "Saying Goodbye to Yang," contains many of the elements that populate the collection: a white male narrator; a setting about 10 or 12 years in the future when the borders between technology and humanity have become increasingly blurred; and a pointed moral. In the title story, a childless couple is able to conceive virtual children in the "New World" (a totally immersive virtual environment), but then must face all-too-real grief when a virus infects their account and they must delete all their data, including their kids. In "The Pyramid and the Ass," one of two stories that take up the theme of Eastern spirituality as practiced by Westerners, Buddhist "terrorists" kidnap people who've had technology chemically and physically implanted in their bodies. Each of the stories feels utterly possible, and the worlds are deftly rendered—whether they show us the effects of climate change or new types of sex made possible by advanced technology. The strongest pieces are those that, like "Saying Goodbye to Yang," explore the nuances of these imagined futures rather than simply romanticizing a world before social media ruined our abilities to interact with each other face to face and depleted our desire to connect with nature. A cleverly wrought, if moralistic, group of tales.