The Celestial Blueprint by Philip José Farmer

In a glittering future where science, art, and absurdity have fused into one grand spectacle, arrogant financier B. T. Revanche arrives at Bioid Electronic with a vendetta burning hotter than his ambition. There he confronts Da Vincelleo, a flamboyant genius who rules through invention, wealth, and a taste for elaborate practical jokes, and the two men begin a deadly alliance of greed, manipulation, and revenge. Revanche's hatred is rooted in Dafess City, a rigid theocracy governed by the Celestial Blueprint, where destiny, rank, and marriage are enforced with brutal certainty and even desire is warped by doctrine. Da Vincelleo turns that hatred into a catastrophe of engineered irony. As the faithful of Dafess await a cosmic blessing, the sky darkens, a heavenly forge appears, and a blazing message announces, "YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN." But the promised salvation descends as sword-bearing replicas of X, a grotesque distortion of holiness that exposes the city's moral corruption and sends the crowd into panic. Revanche, trapped in the nightmare, discovers that the city, its people, and its enemies are all synthetic creations in a revenge drama staged to break him. In the end, rival masterminds destroy one another with their own machines, and a final, fatal trap turns triumph into mutual ruin. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.