Many, many short-story collections by hot new writers will be published this year. Each book will showcase its author's unique vision, his or her particular interpretation of how people interact, perceive, and survive—in short, how people "are" these days. David Gilbert's Remote Feed, with its 10 well-crafted stories that dig below the surface of society, is one of these compilations. Unfortunately, that's really all it is. Gilbert seems to try to center his stories around detached, passionless, confused people who are drifting through life without finding any meaning. Although that is, of course, the oldest theme in creation, it's still best when done well. But his writing is so ambivalent, his characters so clinical, and his wit so brusque that every story seems an act of dismissal. The end result is that there is very little human feeling in Remote Feed. What humanity there is seems thrown in automatically, out of obligation, and comes to no more than stylish feelings of alienation, apathy, and unconscious disregard. It is repellent, but only vaguely; it doesn't seem intended to inspire strong emotion of any kind. Remote Feed is, unfortunately, a symptomatic little book, in many ways identical to those hundreds of other unremarkable collections that will see print this year. It is fully deserving of the "advance praise" given by Fran Lebowitz: "Most importantly, Remote Feed is very definitely not annoying." Again unfortunately, that is fast becoming the standard by which new authors of serious fiction are judged.