Benjamin, Chloe
Entry updated 19 October 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1989- ) US author whose work to date, much of it conveyed through non-fantastic storylines seemingly fixed to the world, does persistently unpack as though a speculative fiction had been undertaken and completed. This sense is particularly acute when each of her novels to date is understood in terms of the kind of Thought Experiment typical of Hard SF. The two protagonists of her first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams (2014), under the control of a magus figure from whom eventually they must escape, submit themselves to a regime of lucid dreaming at times indistinguishable from Virtual Reality. A fortune-teller capable of actual Precognition, who seems as numinous as the scientist dominating the first volume, tells the four protagonists of The Immortalists (2018) exactly when they will die. Three die young as prophesied (or influenced); the fourth immerses herself in longevity research (see Immortality) in an attempt to control the story of her life. Two universes are mysteriously crosshatched in Under Story (2026), one temporally structured as in consensus reality, the other ordained on a Time in Reverse basis, in which Entropy is reversed. Detailed descriptions of lives in each universe, and of the consequences of transferring from one to the other, are perhaps overcomplicatedly unpacked. [JC]
Chloe Benjamin
born San Francisco, California: 1989
works
- The Anatomy of Dreams (New York: Atria Books, 2014) [pb/]
- The Immortalists (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 2018) [hb/]
- Under Story (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 2026) [hb/]
links
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