Reviews

Praise for Blueprints of the Afterlife "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. . . . Duct-tape yourself to the front of this roller coaster and enjoy the ride."--John Schwartz, The New York Times "What an inspired mindfuck of a book. Ryan Boudinot's Blueprints of the Afterlife is a post-apocalyptic satirical explosion of a novel. . . . 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 "The best science fiction takes what we know about technology and humanity and extends it. . . . Blueprints of the Afterlife does just this--only instead of space stations and robots, [Boudinot] clocks the way our perceptions and experiences have already been shaped by technology. . . . 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. Dick or even Cory Doctorow. 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 "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 "Boudinot's novel . . . has a diverse and rich family of ingredients. 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. . . . 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. . . . 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 . . . which is there for the perusal of those who take their time. . . . 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 "Take every high voltage future-shock you can imagine about life as it's shaping up in the twenty-first century, process it through one of the smartest and funniest and weirdly compassionate sensibilities you'll find on this crazy planet at this crazy moment, and you get a novel named Blueprints of the Afterlife. This guy Ryan Boudinot is the WikiLeaks of the zeitgeist."--Robert Olen Butler, author of Hell "Ryan Boudinot . . . writes like the bastard son of Philip K. Dick, William S. Burroughs and Aldous Huxley. . . . Blueprints is both dire prophecy and biting commentary on the modern world."--Josh Davis, Time Out New York "The novel hilariously dumps pop culture into a blender with futurism and presses puréeacute;e."--Anne Saker, The Oregonian "Blueprints of the Afterlife exists in a shining lineage that