Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein :: Review

Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein
Publisher: Picador. September 13, 2016.
Pages: 240
Genre: Short Stories
Source: Publisher



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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.
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.-Goodreads

I haven't been this excited about reading a book in what feels like forever. I knew that I'd like this collection of short stories. It was pitched to me as akin to the TV show Black Mirror, which I absolutely loved. And they weren't wrong about that. Here we have a collection of stories that are all speculative. Set in the very near future, things are just a little different from how they are now. People are a little more hooked into technology, the environment is more fucked, etc. Our scenarios are set up quickly and with apparent ease, and we then get to see normal people interacting with each other in these worlds. The result is at times funny, at times devastating, often both. Weinstein provides riveting stories about being human as well as biting commentary on our world. In the stories, we've got robotic siblings to help out with biological children, and what you do when they malfunction. Enlightenment as a drug (Moksha). Manufactured memories. Support groups for the loss of virtual children. It's all so good, and none of it feels wildly off base from where we are as a society right now.

Moksha, it turned out, wasn't bullshit. It'd just gone into hiding ever since the twenties when the U.S. cracked down on Nepali distribution. There had been nonstop busts at yoga studios and health spas in the U.S. An oxygen bar in Sedona had been found with makeshift crown plates hooked up to an old Sega Genesis console.

I really emphatically enjoyed this whole collection. The only thing keeping me from loving it unconditionally is the fact that none of the stories have a female main character and none of them pass the Bechdel test. To be fair, two of the stories have weird formats and don't actually have a character. One of the shorter stories never specifies the gender. But it was still disappointing. I get if you're somebody who writes about a certain thing. I do. But to both 1) not take up the challenge to write about somebody different from you, or 2) not see females as "just another kind of person" that should be relatively easy to write about because, again, they are just another kind of person, is a disappointment. If the plots of the stories weren't so intriguing, I probably would've begun to find the "wearied male trying to make his family/life work" character that reappeared in most of the stories boring.

It was Rocket Night at our daughter's elementary school, the night when parents, students, and administrators gather to place the least-liked child in a rocket and shoot him into the stars.

Truly, though, that is my only qualm with the book. I want everyone to read these stories, but my point above is something to be aware of and think about. This is one of the most consistently solid collections of short stories that I've read in a while. I've actually sat and read them aloud to people, they're so good. Dark, cleverly written, and brilliantly imagined. I laughed and I cried. Alexander Weinstein gets it. He fucking gets it. And, if you were wondering, my favorite story was "The Cartographers."

"I'm afraid all of your family is corrupted," the supervisor told me. "You'll just end up bringing the virus with you. It's an easy process to reboot. Simply hold down the power button on your console for twenty seconds and--"

"These are my children!" I yelled.

"If it's any consolation, they won't feel a thing; they're just data."

15 Weird Dream-like Reads

If you're looking for some more #weirdathon picks, look no further. Atmosphere is probably the most important thing to me in writing. If the atmosphere of a book can make me feel like I'm somewhere else, I'm satisfied. If that place is strange and dreamy, I'm in love. It's no wonder that half of these weird dream-like books are all-time favorites.

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by 
Alexandra Kleeman

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I want everybody to read this book. In this bizarre debut, main character, A, lives with her roommate, B who is starting to get more and more like her. Their world is strange. A is weirdly obsessed with the complex and disturbing commercials for a not-really-food called Kandy Kakes. Grocery stores shift aisles around regularly to optimize time spent wandering confused, buying things they don't need. And don't even get me started on the cult. Every sentence Kleeman writes is beautiful, disturbing, funny, and/or startling. This novel is some insane and clever commentary on society and body image.

Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball

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In this quiet (ha!) novel, a man confesses to committing a crime where eight elderly people disappeared from their homes, despite not having done it. Then he refuses to speak ever again. This incident is explored through a collection of interviews with related individuals, documents, and photos. And it's not gimmicky at all. I felt like I was carefully looking through peculiar evidence. Many individuals tell what seem like unrelated, dreamy anecdotes. I still can't stop thinking about them and what they could mean. Beautiful.

Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann

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This standalone graphic novel is fuuuucked up. It's a whimsical little garden party with tiny characters, but it's also a gruesome horror show. Very much a fairy tale. A disturbing fairy tale. The cutesy drawings of maggoty little fairies continue to haunt, and delight, me. So much fun to read. Startlingly funny.

Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck

MY REVIEW

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This is one of my favorite short story collections ever. Swedish author Karin Tidbeck creates the most sublime little realities that we get to visit. They are VERY dreamy and very Scandinavian. There's a link to one of the stories from the collection in my original review. If you like speculative fiction, this is not a collection to miss.

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera

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A girls journey in crossing the border from Mexico to America is chronicled in strange, fluid storytelling. At once gritty and fairy tale-like. This is a short lyrical tale about language, family, and culture. I felt like I was floating through it. It wasn't a favorite of mine overall, but there were some parts that got me right in the heart.

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

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Through the Woods is a collection of short comics from Emily Carroll. They are all so creepy and stunning, I don't even know where to begin. It's like light-hearted horror with some of the most beautiful illustrations I've ever seen. If you're a fan of comics, you must check this out. They're a delight to read. I felt like I was in a quiet, wintry nightmare the whole time. You can read one of the comics from the collection here. DO IT.

The Ritual by Adam Nevill

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This is a straight up horror novel for fans of Blair Witch Project. The story follows some campers as they get lost in a forest where things aren't quite what they seem. It is HEART THUMPINGLY tense almost the entire time. I was so spooked. But then, halfway through, Nevill flips the script and takes the story to a whole different place. I liked the first half better, but the second was definitely dreamy and weird. I felt like I had been hit over the head as the madness ensued.

Of Things Gone Astray by Janina Matthewson

MY REVIEW

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In this novel, a collection of unrelated people lose stuff. Their sense of direction, the front of their house, their place of work (like physically it's gone), etc. Also a girl turns into a tree? It's a really whimsical read.

X'ed Out by Charles Burns

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The first in a trilogy, X'ed Out is a graphic novel that opens with the main character waking up to see a hole in his wall. And when he climbs through it, following his cat who had died, he ends up in a CRAZY world. You can tell the difference because he suddenly looks cartoony. Also there are significantly more worm things with faces. The book moves fluidly back and forth between his adventures in this strange world and flash backs of what went wrong in his real life. If you've read Black Hole by Charles Burns, expect the same kind of disturbing nonsense that you could never dream up on your own. This trilogy is great.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

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Karen Russell is the word goddess of my life, and this is one of my favorite books. Her writing is actually superb. Some of the most gorgeous writing I've ever encountered. So she can deftly whip up some weird ass atmosphere. Having your setting be a run down theme park in a swamp certainly helps with that atmosphere. A family copes with the death of the mother in very different, surreal ways. The main character is like always wandering around in a dream. There are definitely ghost boyfriends too. Among SO MANY things. Please go read this, it's beautiful.

The Woods, Vol. 1 by James Tynion IV

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Do you like LOST? Do you like comics? Read this one. A high school is all of a sudden transported to some whole other, slightly magical world that nobody can make heads or tails of. It is just my type of weird. There's a hint at maybe aliens or at least something Ancient Aliens-y?? It's like The Breakfast Club, but with more angry monsters.

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

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Actually one of my favorite books of all time that I NEED everybody to read. Jake White lives on her own on an island with some sheep. But something starts to kill her sheep. The atmosphere is so tense; Wyld's writing so amazing. Every other chapter it switches back to Jake's past and how she got there. But it's told reverse chronologically, so at first it's confusing, but then you appreciate how things are being revealed to you. Very dreamy, very recommended.

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips

MY REVIEW

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Back in nightmare town!! Everything about The Beautiful Bureaucrat is uncanny and odd and tense. Her boss doesn't have a face. Her job doesn't make sense (hellooooo anxiety dreams) and she just types strings of numbers in a tiny office that has dirty handprints on the wall. One day her husband disappears then a couple days later he's back with no explanation. And learning more about the corporation she works for doesn't seem to help. I laughed, I cringed, I gasped. Helen Phillips is one hell of a writer. I couldn't leave this nightmare world once I had started; it was too good to put down.

The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields

MY REVIEW

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In this novel, there are sasquatches and witches and other cryptids hanging out with humans. And they seem metaphorical. But also they're just characters in the novel, nbd.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

MY REVIEW

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Of course I have to mention the Southern Reach Trilogy for the umpteenth time. Annihilation, the first in the trilogy, is like the most tense, surreal nightmare/dream you could ever had. A group of four unnamed women take an expedition into a place called Area X. Every expedition beforehand has failed (everyone dies or everyone kills each other or everyone disappears or everyone shows up much later than dies of cancer, etc.). They have no idea what to expect. It's a short, transporting read that you can finish in one sitting. Oh my goodness, I love this book.

What are your favorite dream-like books?

Literary Aliens, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Our Extraterrestrial Overlords

Books about aliens.

This post first appeared at Book Bloggers International. If you liked this, be sure to check out the other posts in their Bookish Beasts series! They're the best!

Aliens. There's so much to love about them. Why? Because we know literally nothing about them. Sure, there are some archetypes: short grays, tall grays, reptilians, alpha-draconians (and they are all fighting to control the earth and enslave the human race right now. WAKE UP, SHEEPLE). But what's so great about aliens is that they currently exist as an idea. They could be evil, they could be benevolent, they could be new to the galaxy, or they could have been here on earth ~all along~. All we really have is our imaginations to play with the idea of extraterrestrials, which makes them prime material for interesting books. So until we make first contact, here are some of the great, wildly different books about extraterrestrials you should check out that maybe you haven't before. STUDY UP, because they're coming.

SHORT STORIES

The short story "Out of All Them Bright Stars" by Nancy Kress is a phenomenal example of the root of all alien stories. One way or another, they're a commentary on humanity. What's valuable about it, what needs to change. In this story, the aliens have made first contact and are living amongst humans. In a small vignette, the main character witnesses prejudice against an individual alien in a diner. It's so powerful. Read it online here.

This is one of the kinds of alien stories I just go crazy for. In "The Sentinel" by Arthur C. Clarke, a crew of astronauts finds a strange object on the moon surrounded by a forcefield. What's the implication of this object? Where did it come from? And what would happen if they were to break it? The ending thrills AND chills. You can read it here. 

GRAPHIC NOVELS

Though I haven't been loving all the single issue comics coming after it, Trees, Vol. 1 by Warren Ellis is so so solid. The aliens in this comic series are the strong silent type. By that I mean they are enormous tree-like columnar structures that plant themselves down in big cities, destroying a bunch of stuff, and then don't do anything. At all. What is the meaning behind them?? Is there sentience? Who sent them and where are they? This is my kind of extraterrestrial mystery.

And then there are the aliens full of personality. And in the Saga series by Brian K. Vaughan (all 5 volumes out so far are 100% worth reading), the aliens are incredibly human. Two soldiers from warring factions of a space war fall in love and have to deal with the consequences of pursuing that love. And some of the other species they run into are amazing/hilarious/grotesque. If you like aliens AND fun, you must give Saga a read.

FICTION

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor is one of the only real first contact stories on this list, and it's a great one. Something crashes into the sea near Lagos, Nigeria and an alien ambassador begins to communicate with three separate people. She promises them that they want to positively impact humans; that they just need some place to live. But convincing the rest of Nigeria of that is a whole ordeal that tears the city apart. Lagoon is another alien story that that forces us to take a look at our own world.

Now this is my all-time favorite alien book. If you're looking for really truly original and alien aliens, you have GOT to read this. Embassytown by China Miéville. Humans live alongside the indigenous species called Ariekei on a planet. I'm not even going to try to describe the Ariekei race to you, it's too bizarre. But this book takes an amazing look at linguistics and the importance of language on this alien planet. And it is so so good.

BONUS

If you're ready to a little bit of ~serious research~ now that you know aliens are alive and well in the universe and on our planet, you should probably read Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken. This is the book that every person interviewed on Ancient Aliens read as a kid. A lot of it is farfetched, but I have to say, the thought that aliens could have shaped our past is super interesting to think about. SHOW ME PROOF THAT THEY DIDN'T. That's what I thought.

What's your favorite alien story?

Which race of aliens do you hope will come out on top as our overlords and slave-masters in their intergalactic fight for domination?

Review: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
(Southern Reach Trilogy #1)
Publisher: FSG Originals. February 4, 2014
Pages: 195
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: Bookstore
First Line: The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and them the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.


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I have been telling everyone I know to read this book for the past two months. Oh my god. This is my kind of book. Basically, it fills the hole LOST left in my heart. Minus the ending, yeah yeah, everyone likes to complain about that. But Annihilation is only the first in the Southern Reach Trilogy, so it can only really be compared to the beginning of LOST anyway. What I'm trying to say is this book is that brand of weird inexplicable discovery adventure. And it is just as thrilling.

Maybe I should slow down. What is this book even about? An excellent, hard to answer question. It's about a place called Area X. There's not a lot known about this place, but it's this crazy jungle that's cut off from the rest of civilization. Nobody really seems to know what goes on there and the only way to get in is through a government agency's (the Southern Reach) mysterious "border." Eleven expeditions had previously been sent in to explore the mysteries of Area X, but they all either killed themselves, killed each other, or somehow crossed the border and returned to their homes only to die of cancer shortly after. Strange things are clearly going on in this area, as the menacing name would suggest.

This is a story about the twelfth expedition. It is a group of four women who only go by the names the Biologist (she might as well be called the Main Character), the Anthropologist, the Surveyor, and the Psychologist. They all basically know nothing about the area or what they're really supposed to be doing there. The Psychologist has to put them under hypnosis so they don't like die of fright or something when they go over the weird border. They get there and everything's pretty jungle-y and typical until they find a big stone mound with stairs tunneling into the earth. They were given maps, but that wasn't on there. So they go down these stairs, a great idea, and they find words on the wall. Growing in fungus. THAT'S WEIRD. The Biologist gets a little too close and sniffs a fungus spore. But that makes her immune to hypnosis, which apparently the Psychologist continues to use on them.

The Psychologist says some hypnosis trigger word and the rest get knocked out, so the Biologist has to fake it. She lists a bunch of commands and in them is something along the lines of "you will continue to believe the mound is made of stone." WHAT? WHAT EVEN? That is only in the first 20 pages or so. It gets weirder. More inexplicable things happen. It gets scarier. And you get more and more engrossed in the story. It flips between Area X and occasionally the Biologist before her expedition. I won't say any more.

I raced through this book. My own apartment was suddenly very scary at night. This book created a subtle, intense atmosphere that stayed with me and left me hyper-aware of my surroundings. I really love when stories or movies focus on environments. I feel like they can really set the tone for a plot like very little else can. Sometimes the writing felt a little dry, or vaguely scientific (not in vocabulary or content, but in style) perhaps because the narrator was a biologist. But other than that, I really loved this book. It keeps you wondering what's really going on. What is the Tower? What is the Southern Reach? What the hell is going on in Area X? And how much do these expedition members really know?

I'm pretty confident this won't be a trilogy that disappoints. I can't wait to get my hands on that last book.

I think I'm in love.


Some Quotes:

"The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you"

"If funding for a project ran out, or the area we studied was suddenly bought for development, I never returned. There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive, certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you."

"I walked as quietly as possible through the ruined village under just a sliver of moon, unwilling to risk my flashlight. The shapes in the exposed remains of rooms had gathered a darkness about them that stood out against the night and in their utter stillness I sensed an unnerving suggestion of movement."


Outlandishness Rating: 9/10

Need I explain myself? So much weird. It is almost a constant barrage of strange new things that they are finding or learning. And rarely does any of it get explained (in this book at least). I would say more, but I can't! If you're looking for the outlandish, here it is. Read this book already!

Top Ten Twednesday: Most Unique Books I've Read

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

I do what I want I do what I want I do what I want. I should've photoshopped that logo. My opinion is no less legitimate a day late, so here are the then most unique books I can think of right now. I wish I was done with S. by Doug Dorst, so I could stick it on here. Oh well.

Most Unique Books I've Read

1. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I have so much love for this weird, complex book, I don't even know where to begin. If you haven't read it, it's a story narrated by a guy who finds a manuscript written by a man who just died. So the book is all this manuscript with footnotes from the narrator. The manuscript is a research kind of book about a documentary that doesn't exist in our world or in the narrator's world. The documentary is about a house that's increasingly bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It's mad creepy, crazy stuff happens with the formatting, and you can't tell who's going crazy. One of my all-time favorites.

2. Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee by Megan Boyle. This book of poetry is unique in that it doesn't feel like poetry. It's an unabashedly honest, stream of consciousness account of a 20-something's life. It felt fresh and surprising and true. I'd never read any alt-lit before, so it was very unique to me. And highly recommended.

3. Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme. Experimental fiction at its finest and sort of earliest. These stories range from unique subject matter to unique formatting and storytelling techniques. Sometimes there are pictures. They're all surprising and they stick with you. Here's one of my favorites, called The School.

4. Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. This is not a novella for the faint of heart. Some of the weirdest, most cringe-worthy subject matter of my life. This was my first (and only) experience with erotica, and it also included things like urine play, necrophilia, egg obsessions, eye obsessions... I'm not going to continue. Very shocking. Very unique. And also, at times, a surprisingly beautiful ode to freedom. For the record: I am not into any of this stuff. Not that it's any of your business.

5. Embassytown by China Mieville. Maybe I don't read enough sci-fi about aliens, but this is the most unique portrayal of aliens I've ever read. They don't feel human-like at all. The plot is also vast and complicated, the world is fascinatingly new yet familiar, and the story structure is interesting.

6. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I just finished this and OH MAN. It filled the hole LOST left in my heart. There's so much weird going on in this sci-fi/horror. It's about an expedition going into a place called Area X where inexplicable stuff happens and the groups never really return. There's so much crazy, I can't even begin. I'm going to write a review soon, though, and try my best. Thank god it's the first in a trilogy.

7. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. I love this book. The plot is one of the most unique I have ever read. Like I read some dark stuff where I can kind of see how a person would come up with it or how I could come up with it, but Swamplandia! is all sorts of fresh and surprising. It's about a theme park in a swamp where they alligator wrestle and then sort of ghosts and birdmen and so many things, I can't even. Also, it's beautifully written.

8. The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski. I don't want to seem like a Danielewski fangirl, but here I am. I am one. This is actually a short story, but it's printed on every other page, so it looks bigger. Unique, right? It's being told by four narrators and each narrator is represented with different color quotation marks. There are embroidered illustrations. And the plot is a weird, fantastical story, as well. And it gets kind of dark, too, which is nice. For me.

9.  Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball. I just read this recently, and I was really into it. It's about a man who confesses to a string of crimes in Japan, though it seems like he didn't actually do them. But he's silent after that. The story is presented mostly in transcripts of interviews with the man and with other people who knew him. Sometimes there are photos. Sometimes the narrator who is researching the situation long after the fact interjects. Very interesting way to structure a story that is about the event as well as the narrator's experience with silence.

10. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I didn't want to put this on a second list in a row, but how could I not include it? A language was basically created for this book. I mean, it's slang interspersed in normal English, but it's so frequent that at first you have no idea what anybody is saying. You just have to learn it like you would acquire a language as a baby. It's fascinating, and it's a dark, weird dystopian story to boot. This will long be a favorite of mine.


What are the most unique books you've read? Have you stuck through terrifying erotica without knowing why? Suggest weirder things, please!

Review: Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck

Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
Publisher: Cheeky Frawg Books. September 2012
Pages: 114
Genre: Short Stories, Speculative Fiction
Source: Library
First Line: Franz Hiller, a physician, fell in love with an airship.


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Karin Tidbeck's got something crazy going on and I am just so glad that she exists. This book of 13 short stories is a quick, baffling, and exciting read. They were translated from Swedish to English and didn't manage to lose any of their Scandinavian weirdness. They're often dark, often whimsical, and always beautifully written and imagined. I still can't stop thinking about the unique plots and characters that inhabited Tidbeck's worlds, whether I fully understood them or not.

One of my favorites is "Brita's Holiday Village", which you can read here. Another is "Pyret" which is a fascinating story presented like a research essay. It's about a creature that shape shifts to hide among herd animals like cows and eventually, in the case of one village that's mentioned, people. It changes from historical to present-time when she visits the old mostly abandoned village to see if there are any pyrets still there. What she finds is disturbing, it almost feels like horror. The ending is so poignant, it took my breath away. All of her stories had that kind of effect on me.

A story that shows off just how bizarre these stories can get is "Aunts." It's one of, if I remember correctly, two stories that are set in a kind of antiquated, royal, Alice in Wonderland kind of world. There are a set of three women whose sole purpose in life is to eat. A lot. So much so that they can't move. They're brought food in this little dome in an orchard until they actually burst. Once that whole mess is cleaned up, typically a new tiny aunt is clinging to the old one's heart. The story explores what happens when there isn't a tiny aunt waiting inside. Going to be honest, I had no idea what was going on, but it was certainly interesting and disturbing.

This hardly scratches the surface of the stories. There are people who are in love with machines, human bodies run like air ships by tinier people inside (sort of), world changing telemarketing, alternate dimensions, creature creation, fights with god, and more. If you're willing to open your mind for some really fantastical, almost mythical stories, Karen Tidbeck is an incredible writer with amazingly original stories to tell. They're inspired by sci-fi, folklore, and Nordic tradition. I heard that she has a novel out in Swedish, and I'm devastated that it is not translated and in my hands right now. I was really impressed by this collection of stories and can't wait to read more of Tidbeck's.


Some Quotes:

"'I have to know,' said Augusta. 'What is the nature of the world?'
The djinneya smiled with both rows of teeth.
'Which one?'"

"When a creature chooses to die surrounded by keepsakes from a species to which it doesn't belong, leaving an imitation of language behind--has it acted out of instinct or intelligence?"

"The sight brought a painful sensation Cilla could neither name nor explain. It was like a longing, worse than anything she had ever experienced, but for what she had no idea. Something tremendous waited out there. Something wonderful was going to happen, and she was terrified that she would miss it."


Outlandishness Rating: 9/10 

I can't even begin to explain how weird these stories are. Just read them.