A creator of virtual memories struggles to distinguish real-life experience from manufactured events. A childless couple conceive two children in an online world, only for their imagined life to be infected by a computer virus. The robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child 'dies', and a family realises how real a son he had become.
Alexander Weinstein's debut story collection, Children of the New World, imagines a near future of social-media implants and instant connection, environmental collapse and post-revolution discord. It grapples with our unease in the 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 for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.
To read this collection of 13 short stories is to be stunned, thrilled and terrified in equal measure. That's because US writer Alexander Weinstein isn't seeing into the future in a wacky sci-fi sort of way; he's looking at what's just over the horizon and approaching fast...An exceptional debut.' North & South
'A highly enjoyable collection...You will emerge with one heck of a book hangover, and it might take you a while to re-acclimate yourself to the "real" world.' 100% Rock Magazine
'Stories that artfully claw at our complacency and explore, with insight and wit, the human side of the human/technology equation that comprises who we are...Children of the New World is the kind of unsettling read that is a compulsive and confusing pleasure. It pulls just far enough ahead to offer perspective without straining relatability and then deposits you back into a comfortable reality that feels slightly less so.' ArtsHub
'A quiet achievement...Not a single word is wasted; each reality is constructed convincingly, without exposition, and the pages keep turning...You'll find yourself thinking about these worlds later, as you go about your life, and thinking they aren't so far from yours.' Aurealis
