Children of the New World

Children of the New World introduces readers to the lost characters of a near-future of social media software implants, manufactured memories, dangerously immersive virtual reality, and frighteningly intuitive androids. Some live in a superficially utopian future of instant connection and mutual understanding that belies an unbridgeable distance; others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild. All are attempting to hold on to their humanity.
 
In “The Cartographers,” the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while attempting to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by his addiction to his own creations. In “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” the robotic older brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become. “Rocket Night” brings us to a school at which, each October, the “parents, students, and administrators gather to place the least-liked child in a rocket and shoot him into the stars.” And in “Ice Age,” Weinstein explores the layer of ice that may one day cover parts of our world, and the ways in which the society living atop it becomes tainted by the same corruption, greed, and socioeconomic disparities that plague the current American experience.
 
Children of the New World grapples with our unease with the modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies changes the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for a generation both fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.
 
Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Science Festival.