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The Quantum Entanglement
A Quarterfinalist in the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition
America lies in ruins. Nearly a thousand years following the cataclysm that destroyed the world, it has rebuilt itself into many smaller kingdoms, republics, and city states, but the people live simple, desperate lives.
Above all towers the powerful Church of Science, a religious organization that worships the old masters of science, bans technology for all but the wealthiest, and controls society with a velvet glove masking an iron fist.
Deep in the trenches of the Church's hierarchy sits Cort, a young researcher who wants to be left alone to his studies. To Cort's surprise, however, he is about to be drafted into a dangerous mission that will take him to the highest levels of Church society...and the lowest. Cort's mission will test his loyalties, convictions, and beliefs, secretly held against the Church's scriptures. He must navigate a brewing conflict between the Church and the powerful Scientific American Emperor while not letting his true beliefs come to light...for even the slightest dissidence is punishable by disentanglement, a fate worse than death...
America lies in ruins. Nearly a thousand years following the cataclysm that destroyed the world, it has rebuilt itself into many smaller kingdoms, republics, and city states, but the people live simple, desperate lives.
Above all towers the powerful Church of Science, a religious organization that worships the old masters of science, bans technology for all but the wealthiest, and controls society with a velvet glove masking an iron fist.
Deep in the trenches of the Church's hierarchy sits Cort, a young researcher who wants to be left alone to his studies. To Cort's surprise, however, he is about to be drafted into a dangerous mission that will take him to the highest levels of Church society...and the lowest. Cort's mission will test his loyalties, convictions, and beliefs, secretly held against the Church's scriptures. He must navigate a brewing conflict between the Church and the powerful Scientific American Emperor while not letting his true beliefs come to light...for even the slightest dissidence is punishable by disentanglement, a fate worse than death...
462 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 15, 2023
About the author
Aaron Benmark
1 book1 followerAaron Benmark is an author of speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Quantum Entanglement, is a Quarterfinalist in the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition.
His second novel, Sins of the Palatine, is expected to be published later this year.
His second novel, Sins of the Palatine, is expected to be published later this year.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 28, 2026
I am one of the judges of team Space Girls for the SPSFC5 contest. This review is my personal opinion. Officially, it is still in the running for the contest, pending any official team announcements.
Status: Yes
Read: 100%
I paused the book because the next chapter goes through to the 33% of the novel. My batch got yet another post-apocalyptic dystopia novel happening in the former United States. Similar to my batch's book Trascendent, this is another book where the crumbling society has been going on for at least 500 years. Surviving city-states have started returning to a semblance of functional government via a theocracy. What is curious about this book is that this theocracy has this weird love-hate relationship with science and the populace eagerly accepts the status quo.
Trucks, cars, mechanical engines, guns, blacksmithing, etc... all of this is sanctioned. There is also a certain degree of acceptable vanity regarding church architecture. Most average people are functionally illiterate, although revered church officials like the protagonist Cort are well versed using ancient computers that somehow still work surprisingly well. Data analysts are one of the nation's most desirable civilian professions. Curiously enough, most folk are apathetic about politics and there doesn't seem to be a true merchant aristrocratic social class influencing society. Some readers might feel this aspect of the book could have used a bit more worldbuilding, but it somewhat works in this story for me because Cort is discovering more about his nation's politics during his road trip searching for 'unsanctioned heresy'.
Ah, readers must be wondering what is the boogeyman. Women? Nope. This society is strangely pro women's rights and nobody bats an eye if a woman is a high ranking priest, township warlord or wealthy scholar. While the book so far is heteronormative and racially ambigious, society aims its ire towards something else: modern medicine.
I would have personally liked to have seen the implications of the near total ban of medical care such as characters dear to the protagonist in the present timeline by suffering a guaranteed death from easily treatable ailments today such as appendicitis. However, the book might offer such scenarios later on. Antibiotic use is punished by death alongside this society's worst punishment: the forced extraction of a recording device inserted into everyone's ear that records their life events that becomes added to a super computer after their natural death. It's an intruiging behavior that felt somewhat reminiscent of Earthian society in the Digitesque series by Guerric Haché.
I liked it how this book somewhat plays around Cort's misguided ambivalence towards being a clerical member of a religion he doesn't care much about. At the same time, he's terrified of having his recording device removed and respects the oddly named Einstein higher order priests that rule his country. He and the reader become aware early on his obsession reading books in the surviving US Library of Congress earns the disdain of the order's less enlightened priests. And chances are, the mission he's tasked to fulfill might be a trap where he ends up executed.
This book toils with the ever omnipresent what if every step of the way. In a way, it felt a bit like 1984 in the sense the protagonist is aware they always teeter the thin line between compliance with social norms and life-risking deviance. Meanwhile, we get to see how different settlements in the east coast have devolved into their current dilapidated selves. There is certainly a sense the society while pretty competent in certain things like architecture is suffering through the middle of an extended Dark Ages with no renaissance in sight.
At the near 30%, the story is only somewhat in motion as Cort continues traveling through different cities. However, I am having so much fun discovering new aspects of this world that I am curious to know if Cort ends up in trouble. Therefore, I am voting yes for the book to continue in the competition.
---
Update!
Bit of an apology for not writing the updated review, I was feeling unwell all weekend, partially as a result from reading books after dark, but now I feel good enough to finish my long-awaited review.
I really hope more readers give this book a shot and not shy away from how it is a debut with very few reviews. The writing quality shows and the book wholeheartedly deserved its quarterfinalist spot in the competition. Things get messier as the personal convictions of the 5 travellers start to collide with brute force in a society that is making the same mistakes as the one before The Fall.
From the religious soldier's fervor towards an outdated cause, Patricia... ahem, Her Excellency's sordid past, Bart's misguided good intentions, Lynd's hypocrisy and Colt's personal battle between stagnation and determination, I am truly amazed this book is a debut because it was so well written. Readers can spot interminable hidden layers worth discussing within Social Science 101 classes for years to come.
In certain ways, this book reminds me of a more religious, far less sex obsessed and more scientifically acurrate Brave New World. While the worldbuilding is different and more similar to a 1984, the main story conflict of one of the protagonists is their doubts about the righteousness of a broken society.
I did feel Lynd's character was the least developed of the 5, although later in the book we see a much more negative display where she deviates from Cort's worldview without even realizing her nonstop prior conversations with him seemed to be more to convince others than herself. It is difficult to explain further without spoiling the final 15% of the book.
The following observation I will side beneath a spoiler tag.
Anyhow, the book is dark without getting too graphically explicit, but I am certain readers will have immense fun reading this story.
4.5 stars!
Status: Yes
Read: 100%
I paused the book because the next chapter goes through to the 33% of the novel. My batch got yet another post-apocalyptic dystopia novel happening in the former United States. Similar to my batch's book Trascendent, this is another book where the crumbling society has been going on for at least 500 years. Surviving city-states have started returning to a semblance of functional government via a theocracy. What is curious about this book is that this theocracy has this weird love-hate relationship with science and the populace eagerly accepts the status quo.
Trucks, cars, mechanical engines, guns, blacksmithing, etc... all of this is sanctioned. There is also a certain degree of acceptable vanity regarding church architecture. Most average people are functionally illiterate, although revered church officials like the protagonist Cort are well versed using ancient computers that somehow still work surprisingly well. Data analysts are one of the nation's most desirable civilian professions. Curiously enough, most folk are apathetic about politics and there doesn't seem to be a true merchant aristrocratic social class influencing society. Some readers might feel this aspect of the book could have used a bit more worldbuilding, but it somewhat works in this story for me because Cort is discovering more about his nation's politics during his road trip searching for 'unsanctioned heresy'.
Ah, readers must be wondering what is the boogeyman. Women? Nope. This society is strangely pro women's rights and nobody bats an eye if a woman is a high ranking priest, township warlord or wealthy scholar. While the book so far is heteronormative and racially ambigious, society aims its ire towards something else: modern medicine.
I would have personally liked to have seen the implications of the near total ban of medical care such as characters dear to the protagonist in the present timeline by suffering a guaranteed death from easily treatable ailments today such as appendicitis. However, the book might offer such scenarios later on. Antibiotic use is punished by death alongside this society's worst punishment: the forced extraction of a recording device inserted into everyone's ear that records their life events that becomes added to a super computer after their natural death. It's an intruiging behavior that felt somewhat reminiscent of Earthian society in the Digitesque series by Guerric Haché.
I liked it how this book somewhat plays around Cort's misguided ambivalence towards being a clerical member of a religion he doesn't care much about. At the same time, he's terrified of having his recording device removed and respects the oddly named Einstein higher order priests that rule his country. He and the reader become aware early on his obsession reading books in the surviving US Library of Congress earns the disdain of the order's less enlightened priests. And chances are, the mission he's tasked to fulfill might be a trap where he ends up executed.
This book toils with the ever omnipresent what if every step of the way. In a way, it felt a bit like 1984 in the sense the protagonist is aware they always teeter the thin line between compliance with social norms and life-risking deviance. Meanwhile, we get to see how different settlements in the east coast have devolved into their current dilapidated selves. There is certainly a sense the society while pretty competent in certain things like architecture is suffering through the middle of an extended Dark Ages with no renaissance in sight.
At the near 30%, the story is only somewhat in motion as Cort continues traveling through different cities. However, I am having so much fun discovering new aspects of this world that I am curious to know if Cort ends up in trouble. Therefore, I am voting yes for the book to continue in the competition.
---
Update!
Bit of an apology for not writing the updated review, I was feeling unwell all weekend, partially as a result from reading books after dark, but now I feel good enough to finish my long-awaited review.
I really hope more readers give this book a shot and not shy away from how it is a debut with very few reviews. The writing quality shows and the book wholeheartedly deserved its quarterfinalist spot in the competition. Things get messier as the personal convictions of the 5 travellers start to collide with brute force in a society that is making the same mistakes as the one before The Fall.
From the religious soldier's fervor towards an outdated cause, Patricia... ahem, Her Excellency's sordid past, Bart's misguided good intentions, Lynd's hypocrisy and Colt's personal battle between stagnation and determination, I am truly amazed this book is a debut because it was so well written. Readers can spot interminable hidden layers worth discussing within Social Science 101 classes for years to come.
In certain ways, this book reminds me of a more religious, far less sex obsessed and more scientifically acurrate Brave New World. While the worldbuilding is different and more similar to a 1984, the main story conflict of one of the protagonists is their doubts about the righteousness of a broken society.
I did feel Lynd's character was the least developed of the 5, although later in the book we see a much more negative display where she deviates from Cort's worldview without even realizing her nonstop prior conversations with him seemed to be more to convince others than herself. It is difficult to explain further without spoiling the final 15% of the book.
The following observation I will side beneath a spoiler tag.
Anyhow, the book is dark without getting too graphically explicit, but I am certain readers will have immense fun reading this story.
4.5 stars!
December 11, 2023
In his mesmerizing debut novel, author Aaron Benmark has created a richly imaginative and immersive world that takes readers on a breathtaking journey into a post-apocalyptic America, a millennium after a devastating nuclear holocaust reshaped the world into an unrecognizable, yet eerily fascinating, realm.
The true strength of "Quantum Entanglement" lies in the author's remarkable world-building skills. Every detail, from the intricacies of the societies that have risen from the ashes to the political and moral dilemmas the protagonists face, is meticulously rendered with a vividness that immerses readers in the story.
What further sets this novel apart is not just its inventive premise, but Benmark's impressive command of storytelling and ability to seamlessly blend suspense, action, character development and the exploration of profound themes. The pacing is well-crafted, keeping the reader hooked from the opening pages to the climactic finale.
You'll definitely want to add this one to your reading list!
The true strength of "Quantum Entanglement" lies in the author's remarkable world-building skills. Every detail, from the intricacies of the societies that have risen from the ashes to the political and moral dilemmas the protagonists face, is meticulously rendered with a vividness that immerses readers in the story.
What further sets this novel apart is not just its inventive premise, but Benmark's impressive command of storytelling and ability to seamlessly blend suspense, action, character development and the exploration of profound themes. The pacing is well-crafted, keeping the reader hooked from the opening pages to the climactic finale.
You'll definitely want to add this one to your reading list!
November 20, 2023
This is a dystopian tale about life in America after the devastation of the democracy by nuclear war and climate change. A totalitarian government now rules the country and a class system is in place that strictly forbids the usage of technology that was deemed responsible for almost destroying the planet. The main character is given a secret mission that takes him on an adventure across the country that reveals the harsh reality of life under the new regime. The characters are interesting and the language is rich. If you are a fan of dystopian fiction, you will not want to miss this one.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews