Living History

Living History is a wildly imaginative science fiction novel by British author Ben Essex, set in a dystopian future city-state known as America Little, where corporations control knowledge and every idea carries a price tag. The story blends satire, dark humor, and speculative fiction into a surprisingly gripping tale about one man's impossible task and the spectacular lie he tells to survive it.

Jacob White works for the all-powerful Salmon Corporation, an organization that owns the future and does not tolerate failure. When White is ordered to resurrect historical figures through cloning, a task that proves entirely beyond any real scientific capability, he faces a stark choice between admitting defeat and spinning the most elaborate bluff in human history. He chooses the bluff, with consequences that spiral far beyond anything he could have anticipated.

The novel explores themes of corporate power, the distortion of history, and the human obsession with legendary figures from the past. In a world where history books have been rewritten to suit authority and myths like that of Benjamin Franklin have been inflated beyond recognition, White's desperate deception becomes a dark mirror held up to a society that prefers comfortable fictions over inconvenient truths.

Ben Essex delivers a fast-paced, often darkly comic narrative that keeps readers off-balance right up to its final pages. The story is part absurdist adventure and part sharp social critique, populated with memorable characters and punctuated with clever twists. Living History is a thought-provoking and entertaining read for fans of satirical science fiction who enjoy stories that blend sharp wit with genuine philosophical weight.