From the Bookshelf of Tyler Public Library…

[close] Bradbury would greatly approve of Weinstein’s imaginative short-story collection, heralding a bleak future where people no longer connect to each other or the physical world, but instead choose to reside in a virtual reality.

Technology runs amok throughout Weinstein’s visionary stories, in the form of manufactured memories, virtual reality, clone children, and perspicacious robots. In my favorite story, “Saying Goodbye to Yang”, a family cannot afford to repair or replace their robotic son, and only in his absence do they realize how very real he was to them. “The Cartographers” looks at the danger of manufactured memories and the reader witnesses Adam, a memory-creator, slowly slip into an addiction to the very memories he writes, while failing to seek real and meaningful relationships. These stories are a disturbing look at how technology may slowly erode our connection to the planet and each other.

Highly recommended for fans of speculative and sci-fi fiction.