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Broken Utopia
Ryan Boudinot's first new novel since 2012's Blueprints of the Afterlife follows a cast of mystics, frauds, and profoundly incompetent cult leaders through Iceland, Seattle, black holes, and a few blown minds on a quest to reboot reality itself. Lee is one of the most celebrated American novelists of the 1980s, not to mention an obnoxious, womanizing jerk. His body of work happens to have been created by artificial intelligence in the future and delivered to him by some guy named Max. Broken Utopia locates Lee and Max in a cosmos divided into three interdependent layers—the eternal Town, the User Platform and the Substrate—all ruled by Vicarious, a company that converts human experiences into drugs. Residents of the Town enjoy lives on a loop of endless enrichment and wonder, as inhabitants of the User Platform eke out harrowing routines of addiction and delusion. Meanwhile, in the Substrate, a near future earth teeters at the edge of a mass extinction event that—for better or worse—is only temporary. This is the 18th book in the Fellow Travelers Series.
500 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2025
About the author
Ryan Boudinot
18 books149 followersRyan Boudinot is the author of the novels BROKEN UTOPIA, BLUEPRINTS OF THE AFTERLIFE, and MISCONCEPTION and the story collections THE OCTOPUS RISES and THE LITTLEST HITLER. His work has been shortlisted for the PEN/USA Award and the Philip K Dick Award and published in translation in Germany, Spain, and the Czech Republic.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 23, 2026
Loved this, though I suspect it was written by AI.
April 29, 2026
Feels like if Philip K Dick wrote a book in 2025
April 7, 2026
honored to be the first review so let me set it straight : this book is not for everyone but if you are inclined to silliness, then youll probably enjoy it.
broken utopia was smart, stupid, confusing, and illuminating all at once. it's a book of contradictions (that really aren't), and mind bending logic loops that was genuinely thrilling to read (and I hate this expression). it's a book about humans and just how odd and silly we really are, but also ravenously critical of our modern downfalls. and it's hilarious through and through. while the pacing slowed at some points, the plot is secondary enough that it hardly matters; Boudinot's sheer creativity carries the narrative forward, along with the development of Lee as a person, which I found oddly empathetic in a universe that is quite the opposite. But mostly, the question you want answered is... "What in the flying fuck is going on?".
at the end, I was wholly disappointed that it was over, and my mind is eating itself trying to construct the history of Lee Hightower - sorry, Highwater.
I won't detail specifics because that's where the book shines the most ! all these incredibly imaginative details that are, at once, grounded in modern reality and completely off the wall.
broken utopia was smart, stupid, confusing, and illuminating all at once. it's a book of contradictions (that really aren't), and mind bending logic loops that was genuinely thrilling to read (and I hate this expression). it's a book about humans and just how odd and silly we really are, but also ravenously critical of our modern downfalls. and it's hilarious through and through. while the pacing slowed at some points, the plot is secondary enough that it hardly matters; Boudinot's sheer creativity carries the narrative forward, along with the development of Lee as a person, which I found oddly empathetic in a universe that is quite the opposite. But mostly, the question you want answered is... "What in the flying fuck is going on?".
at the end, I was wholly disappointed that it was over, and my mind is eating itself trying to construct the history of Lee Hightower - sorry, Highwater.
I won't detail specifics because that's where the book shines the most ! all these incredibly imaginative details that are, at once, grounded in modern reality and completely off the wall.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews