RYAN BOUDINOT / Blueprints of the Afterlife
Ryan Boudinot’s daring and wildly imaginative novel BLUEPRINTS OF THE AFTERLIFE takes place in a future where the distinctions between nature, humanity, and technology have become indistinguishable, and the end of the world is no more than a distorted memory called “the Age of F***ed Up Shit.”
Boudinot, called “some kind of new and dangerous cross between Vonnegut and Barthelme” by Dave Eggers, deftly combines absurdism and satire with the outrageous high-concept storytelling of slipstream sci-fi to offer a novel that is rich in riddles, ideas, and secret treasures.
We enter a world where a sentient glacier has wiped out most of North America’s cities, and telepathy has become a reality. Medical care is supplied by open-source nanotechology, human nervous systems can be hacked, and the Web is interfaced with the collective unconscious. Abby Fogg is a film archivist with a niggling feeling that her life is not really her own. And she’s right. Al Skinner is a former mercenary for the Boeing Army, who’s dragged his war baggage behind him for nearly a century. Woo-jin Kan is a virtuoso dishwasher with the Hotel and Restaurant Management Olympics medals to prove it. Over them all hovers a mysterious man named Dirk Bickle, who puts the right people in the right places at the right times—and it all culminates in a full-scale replica of Manhattan under construction in Puget Sound.
BLUEPRINTS OF THE AFTERLIFE is a compelling novel of future shock, overconsumption, social control, and human nature by one of the most promising young novelists of his generation.
Ryan Boudinot’s work has appeared in The Best American Non-Required Reading twice, and in Best American Fantasy, McSweeney’s, BlackBook, and Nerve. He blogs about film on The Rumpus and teaches in Goddard College’s MFA program.
- Street:
- 1644 Haight St.
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Province:
- California
- Postal Code:
- 94117-2816
- Country:
- United States
