credit: Jennifer Beard

Author Ryan Boudinot

The novel Blueprints of the Afterlife takes place in the future, where an apocalypse (brought on by warfare, environmental catastrophe and an angry glacier) has long since passed into a hazy memory. At the center of Seattle author Ryan Boudinot's new novel is a new world chock-full of hope and despair.

In Bodinot's future, there exists a biological Internet linking mankind, uploading vaccinations to cure common diseases, as well as leaving our bodies vulnerable to hacking. Bainbridge Island, Washington, is the future home of a nearly perfect replication of Manhattan, complete with the same garbage in the streets and the dreams of the long-deceased inhabitants flowing through the city.

During an interview with Think Out Loud's David Miller, Boudinot explained how Blueprints of the Afterlife builds a world torn apart by the enviable destruction of modern life and global warming, but was never aimed to evoke an "environmental scold."

"We have cars, we have phones that run on electricity that's made from burning coal, we have all sorts of things we distract ourselves with in more and more baroque ways. I don't want [Blueprints of the Afterlife] to sound like an environmental scold kind of novel, because one thing I find important is that we approach all of this with a good sense of humor. And that we protect our sense of humor to the very end, which is what this novel is attempting to do..."

credit: Nate Manny

The novel is propelled by a set of big questions: If our warming, warring, teeming earth is headed for a reckoning, what happens next? Who will pick up the pieces? Who will make sense of them? How will they be put together the next time?

In the novel, the apocalypse is beginning to take place now. And a more pessimistic side of Boudinot doesn't find it hard to imagine. "It strikes me as so fascinating that at a time when we are so increasingly aware of where we are heading as a planet, and we're aware of what we could do to fix it and derail it, we still tune in to the reality television culture and disposable culture we live in. We seem to be incapable on some really deep level of changing our ways. To the point we might be subconsciously forcing a conflict that we don't otherwise need."

Yet another side of Boudinot is more optimistic. "The other thing I wonder, I wonder if in 50 years time we'll still be hanging around talking about when the end of the world is going to happen, because we've been talking about that for a long, long time."

Listen to Think Out Loud's full interview with Ryan Boudinot.

This article includes contributions from Think Out Loud's David Miller.