Children of the New World

Starred review from August 1, 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.

July 1, 2016
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.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 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

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2016
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)