Universal Love: Stories

by Alexander Weinstein

Universal Love welcomes readers to a near-future world where our everyday technologies have fundamentally altered the possibilities and limits of how we love one another. In these gripping stories, a young boy tries to understand what keeps his father tethered to the drowned city they call home. A daughter gets to know her dead mother's hologram better than she ever knew her living mother. And, at a time when unpleasant memories can be erased, a man undergoes electronic surgery to have his depression, and his past, forever removed. In an age when technology offers the easiest cures for loneliness, these characters must wrestle with what it means to stay human in an increasingly cybernetic future, and how love can endure even the most alluring upgrades.

In the vein of Weinstein’s critically-acclaimed first collection, Universal Love is a visionary book, written with one foot in the real world and one stepping bravely into the future.

• ISBN10: 1250144361
• ISBN13: 9781250144362
• Publish Date: 8 February 2021 (first published 1 January 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 25 June 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 240
• Language: English
• URL: http://melia.co.uk/page/detail/?k=9781250144362

Reviews

[lovelybookshelf]

I loved Weinstein's CHILDREN OF THE NEW WORLD, so I was eager to read this title. The speculative stories in UNIVERSAL LOVE imagine how future technology will impact humanity; how we survive, how we come to know ourselves, and how we connect to each other. The premises seem far-fetched, but terrifyingly not the more you read. 

I enjoyed every single story, but "Beijing" and "Comfort Porn" were my favorites by far. LGBTQ+ folks who've been made to feel that living authentically creates problems for others will be moved by "Beijing." "Comfort Porn" frankly explores social media's effects on friendship and human connection, especially in a capitalist society that reduces people to transactions.

This collection was everything I love in speculative fiction: character-driven while still giving me that "must find out what happens next" feeling, futuristic technology that seems not too far away, and social commentary that relates to us today, giving me plenty to chew on after I've put the book down.