Daniel Rirdan: Republic of Forge and Grace, Gebunden

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"OUR VERDICT: GET IT" -Kirkus Reviews

The utopia he didn't know he was homesick for.

Republic of Forge and Grace is a bold reimagining of American potential-echoing Kim Stanley Robinson's systems thinking and the sweeping scope of Callenbach's Ecotopia . Rich in technical detail, shot through with wit and unexpected sensuality, it's a love letter to the America that might have been. It is grounded in real-world know-how, for readers who want speculative fiction with brains, a beating heart, and the nerve to ask: what if we made different choices?

When Chris Walden stumbles into Boulder, Colorado, in a parallel universe, he's just looking to shoot some video, cash in, and bail. But what he finds captivates him: a place where folks raise houses together, kids know how to weld, and courtship begins at the Summer Ball. This America never shipped its working hands overseas, never traded its main streets for strip malls. It runs on vacuum-maglev trains and liquid-metal reactors-but it also passes down customizable radios, leaves muddy footprints on the porch, and its dishwashers argue back. Out on the Great Plains, bison and cheetahs run wild again.

As Chris is drawn into the orbit of an unconventional four-way relationship, his bonds to the place deepen, and he begins to see what his America traded away-and what this one still might lose. In the world he left behind, his entrepreneurial friend sees only an untapped market to exploit.

Chris came as a tourist. Now, he's the only thing standing between two worlds.

A note to readers considering Republic of Forge and Grace

This novel stands squarely in the utopian tradition-alongside works such as Ecotopia and Looking Backward. Its engine is not plot in the conventional sense, but the exploration of an alternate society and how it functions. The dense worldbuilding is intentional. It is the point: A blueprint rendered in narrative form.

And yes-it is utopian. Unabashedly. Joyously so.