To read this novel is to feel keenly the dystopian future, especially the digital future of the Pacific Northwest to be entertained and delighted to be driven down into successive layers of complication and paradox, each more satisfying than the last.” -Rick Moody, The Believer which is there for the perusal of those who take their time. Blueprints of the Afterlife, somewhat in the style of the earlier novels of Thomas Pynchon, also has a manifest content that is often unpredictable, imaginative, and bittersweet, and a latent content. A mere description of ingredients, however, fails to take into account the transformative process of reading Blueprints of the Afterlife, whose howls of dissatisfaction with what American culture is (for such is almost all speculative fiction) are kaleidoscopic, provocative, in-your-face, restless, sad. We might speak of certain literary components, such as the work of Kurt Vonnegut, the work of Richard Brautigan, the work of Tom Robbins, and/or the work of Haruki Murakami. has a diverse and rich family of ingredients.

“Digital where Brave New World is merely analog, Blueprints of the Afterlife makes both 1984 and the Book of Revelation seem like yesterday’s news.” -Tom Robbins, author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues But while it’s plenty easy to find other novels to compare Blueprints to, the book offers a completely singular reading experience.” -Alison Hallett, The Portland Mercury Blueprints calls to mind Jonathan Lethem’s recent Chronic City and the work of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, as much as it does sci-fi predecessors like Philip K. Blueprints of the Afterlife does just this-only instead of space stations and robots, clocks the way our perceptions and experiences have already been shaped by technology. “The best science fiction takes what we know about technology and humanity and extends it.

Fans of China Mieville, Kurt Vonnegut, and, say, Terry Gilliam may gravitate toward Boudinot, but his out-of-control imagination is all his own.” -Andrea Appleton, Baltimore City Paper Ryan Boudinot’s Blueprints of the Afterlife is a post-apocalyptic satirical explosion of a novel. Duct-tape yourself to the front of this roller coaster and enjoy the ride.” -John Schwartz, The New York Times “A fierce literary imagination, building the kinds of worlds that William Gibson used to write before he discovered the present it is warmed by the kind of offbeat, riffing humor that has suffused the works of Neal Stephenson and Gary Shteyngart, with Chuck Palahniuk’s cartoonish gore and Neil Gaiman’s creepy otherworlds blended in. Blueprints of the Afterlife establishes Ryan Boudinot as an exceptional novelist of great daring. Over them all hovers a mysterious man named Dirk Bickle, who puts 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. Woo-jin Kan is a virtuoso dishwasher with the Hotel and Restaurant Management Olympics medal to prove it. Al Skinner is a former mercenary for the Boeing Army, who’s dragged his war baggage behind him for nearly a century. Abby Fogg is a film archivist with a niggling feeling that her life is not her own. Medical care is supplied by networked nanotechnology, and human nervous systems can be hacked. The end of the world is no more than a distorted memory called “the Age of F***ed-up Shit.” A sentient glacier has wiped out most of North America’s cities.

Dick a novel that marries absurd satire with the high-concept storytelling of slipstream sci-fi. Blueprints of the Afterlife is a tour de force-part George Saunders, part Philip K. Ryan Boudinot is one of the most promising young novelists of his generation, called “wickedly talented” ( The Boston Globe) and “darkly funny” ( The New York Times Book Review).

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