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.

‘A darkly mesmerizing, fearless, and exquisitely written work. Stunning, harrowing, and brilliantly imagined.’ – Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven