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Children of the New World

Stories

Alexander Weinstein

Picador

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ISBN10: 1250098998
ISBN13: 9781250098993

Trade Paperback

240 Pages

$16.00

CA$22.99

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Children of the New World introduces readers to a near-future world of social media implants, memory manufacturers, dangerously immersive virtual reality games, and alarmingly intuitive robots. Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.

In “The Cartographers,” the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become.

Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.

Reviews

Praise for Children of the New World

"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

"A darkly comic look at how far people will go to hold on to the devices that are replacing human experience."—The Washington Post

“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

“[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

“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

“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

Reviews from Goodreads

BOOK EXCERPTS

Read an Excerpt


SAYING GOODBYE TO YANG


 


WE’RE SITTING AROUND the table eating Cheerios—my wife sipping tea, Mika playing with her spoon, me suggesting apple picking over the weekend—when Yang slams...

About the author

Alexander Weinstein

ALEXANDER WEINSTEIN is the director of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. He is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and his stories have received the Lamar York, Gail Crump, and New Millennium Prizes, have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and appear in the anthology New Stories from the Midwest. He is an associate professor of creative writing at Siena Heights University and leads fiction workshops in the United States and Europe.

Francesca Albert

Alexander Weinstein

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