Review by New York Times Review
THE MOST DISTURBING Stories about the future may be less about what could happen, given unforeseen circumstances, and more about what should happen given the way things are right now. The haunting visions of a sad tomorrow in Alexander Weinstein's excellent first collection, "Children of the New World," fit that category. Inspired by the author's anxiety over our increasingly virtual lives, these 13 stories artfully slam an unchecked obsession with technology and affirm the beauty of reality's texture. Perhaps the best expression of those qualities arrives in "Migration," an unsettling and touching story that centers on a small family whose lives are so thoroughly conducted online that they "haven't been outside in years." It unfolds from the father's perspective. He's a literature professor at a virtual university who's having a pathetic affair with a bronzed student avatar named Kira. His wife, meanwhile, designs digital landscapes for places like Whole Foods' online corporate headquarters. (Her e-lover, naturally, is a muscular 20-something gardener named Rick.) The marriage works, sort of, but their son, Max, is not O.K. A middle schooler who was subjected to virtual bullying, Max has grown tired of video games and now sulks about in a hockey mask to signify his sympathy with the "angry anti-tech youth" movement. One night, Max's dad finds him in the garage, secretly inflating the tires on an old bicycle. Going for a ride would be an act of radical rebellion. "I grab his arm," Max's dad tells us. "It's the first time I've touched my son in months, and the shock of his skin beneath mine suddenly reminds me of what it was like to hold him as a child." Max later makes his two-wheeled escape, and his father finds him alone in the parking lot of a long-abandoned shopping plaza, playing with a real tennis ball instead of his standard virtual game of Tennis. Before the story closes with an unexpected encounter with the sublime, Max marvels at the authenticity of our imperfect world. "You know, whenever I play Tennis, the ball always bounces smoothly and makes the same sound," he tells his father. "But that's not what happens in real life. It bounces differently." "Children of the New World" considers other tensions future families may confront. In perhaps the book's most affecting story, "Saying Goodbye to Yang," the strange calculus around reviving a broken beloved robot mixes home appliance repair with the health care industrial complex. "He'll check Yang out and fix him for a third of what those guys at Q-Fix will charge you," a helpful neighbor tells Yang's owner. "Tell Russ I sent you." Later, in "Heartland," we visit a desperate world so stripped of natural resources that even soil is scarce. "The land's gone, the water's going," one character laments. "We're done for." If the day comes when children are the only thing of value we still produce, the story ultimately wonders, how far might we go to capitalize on that value? Finally, the book's title story beautifully depicts the real grief that may one day accompany shattered virtual lives. In this case, the software running a couple's virtual children gets infected with a computer virus. To save the system, the children must be deleted, and the couple turn to a live support group at a local community center to cope with the loss. There, they find redemption and hope in rediscovering something this author deeply believes: There will always be a few things we need that we won't ever find online. "We pull strangers into our embrace and hold them tightly against us," Weinstein writes. "There's nothing electronic about the gesture, no hum to the body, only the warmth of their breathing and the beating of their hearts." JOHN WILWOL'S reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday. In one story, a boy's preference for his bike over video games is an act of radical rebellion.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 8, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The new world Weinstein imagines in this mind-blowing debut collection of stealthily speculative stories is our world fast-forwarded to the eviscerated future we seem hell-bent on creating. The basics of families remain, along with bone-deep social expectations and the welter of emotions that guide and derail us. But in Heartland, people are so destitute they've sold off all the topsoil, turning once-fertile farmland into a dead zone. In Saying Good-bye to Yang, procreation seems to have ceased, replaced by cloning and androids. In the title story, a couple immerses themselves in phony digital memories of children they never had. In other tales, such beamed memories, electric joy, are the insidious new narcotics, and enlightenment, via data shots to the cranium, can be purchased, though it's illegal in the States, sending one young seeker to Nepal. 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.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly 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. 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.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
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 © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
