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.

Vis­it­ing Scribe: Alexan­der Weinstein

Encoun­ters with Rab­bi Zal­man: The Humor of Enlightenment

Encoun­ters with Rab­bi Zal­man: Rit­u­als for Peo­ple Healers