The New Utopia

by J. Billings

The New Utopia is a mosaic descent into the fringes of the underworld. Two detectives stalk through the reality of their own dreams. A murdering spiritualist converses with his victim. Street addresses go missing. Abandoned buildings speak to one another. Voyeuristic loners mythologize what they see in the shadows. And at the center of it all is one woman.

In his debut novel. J. Billings catalogues the unseen alcoves of the subterranean. Staring back into the gaze of the surveillance camera, deciphering its memories, and opening a portal into the labyrinthine world just outside our grasp.

It is too late to stop. The explosion of the universe has already happened. This is the mutation.

98 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2023

Reviews

[Andrew Rush · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine the collapse of a mind, from order to chaos to complete metaphysical sense. Personal identity backlogged into computer programs composing one program entered into the abyss of a higher conscience intertwined with a reconceptualization of time. The characters insist on living their lives ignorant of the end or beginning, the nonlogical happenings are not to be considered, until they are the atmosphere that exist, which has always been. Meaning the mind contradicts itself by existing, there is no escape. Escaping would be living an illusion of the self, thinking that you “are” and the world sits in a chair next to you. There are parallels to a transcendence of mind in the way eastern thought contributes to religion and philosophy; explicated explicitly through Suchness. The reader might realized this through the detective’s dreams, where “falseness and trueness” have no distinct qualities but they exist nonetheless, the self is “meaningless and expired.” Or it might remind someone of the perceived world caving in around the subject as the qualities of objects dissolve into the subject fussing a thing of Suchness. A driving force of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Nausea” is exploring this phenomenon. The New Utopia is the exploration of the subject succumbing to oblivion through at least 853467 doorways in which the basement is discovered. The universe sinks beneath its own foundation. Or is it that this women who seizes to exist, or never existed, is a link between minds, and as reality expands exposing its only nature, these computer logged minds collide. The women does not exist because she made it so, because none of us exist as the illusion serves itself. The explosion of the universe begins in the mind and seeps to the basement. The mutation is the program already written. The mutation is the contradiction of the conscience and sub-conscience shedding to one nature revealed. The mutation never ends, the conquering of minds continues as the numbers appear infinitely in the basement.

[Samuel Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fractured cyber-detective experimentation. The narrative dips in and out of a handful of threads that weave and meld into one another.

It's a quick bite, but accomplishes a lot in that time.

Not too much in terms of plot, development or answers but a fun, glitchy, ambitious ride.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't go in the basement.
Don't go in the attic.
Don't go in the crawlspace.
Don't go in the dreamatorium.
Don't go in the vacant womb.
Don't go in the basement.

Wait, did I mention not to go in the basement yet?

[Matthew King · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never seen this place in my lifetime. I am here every night in my nightmares.

Great first book, can’t wait to read more works!