Children of the New World
Ratings14
Average rating3.8
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.
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I picked up this book because of a comparison a podcast host made between it and some of George Saunders more speculative short stories. Weinstein's tales begin with technological twists on our present world. The near, believable futures told in these memorable tales, led me to wonder: What if we really could see our screens on the inside of our eyelids? Will we someday feel grief when our AI servants or “friends” reach the end of their functional lives? And, from the last story in the anthology, what would it be like to live through another “Ice Age?” Thoughtful and thought-provoking stories which remain with the reader long after the final page is turned.
How often do I give a short story collections 5 stars? Almost never. This one, however, this one is filled with stories that are mindblowingly awesome. Black Mirror-ish in the telling, all of these universes seem to be our time only slightly just ahead of us in the future. The futures in these stories are frightening. Nightmare inducing visions of climate change, devices planted in our minds, robot children, invented memories and a complete death to our current way of life.
Weinstein's style reminds me of George Saunders, this work reminds me of Black Mirror. It's impossible to pick a favorite-they were all good.
These are the ones I think I might never forget:
Fall Line, Migration, Rocket Night (OMG a modern The Lottery), Ice Age, and The Cartographers (which smacked me in the face with it's giant twist of an ending)
So very, very good.
