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). Blueprints of the Afterlife is a tour de force—part George Saunders, part Philip K. Dick; a novel that marries absurd satire with the high-concept storytelling of slipstream sci-fi.
It is the future. The end of the world is no more than a distorted memory. A sentient glacier has wiped out most of North America’s cities. Medical care is supplied by networked nanotechnology, and human nervous systems can be hacked. Abby Fogg is a film archivist with a niggling feeling that her life is not 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 medal to prove it. 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. Blueprints of the Afterlife establishes Ryan Boudinot as an exceptional novelist of great daring.
