Killing Time

It's 2023, and the Web has almost destroyed the world. While cyberspace's early pioneers promoted the Net as a revolution in human communication, America has instead become a society of desk-bound introverts who believe everything they read. The federal government has been "bought" by a Microsoft-style corporation. Any semblance of central authority has vanished. As the Net infiltrates India and Pakistan, fevered nationalists and terrorists find one more medium through which to spread the word.

With Killing Time, Caleb Carr (The Alienist, The Angel of Darkness) manages to create a future that's both frightening and nostalgic. The novel's narrator, Dr. Gideon Wolfe, longs for a world before technology swallowed people's minds and imaginations. Through a series of complex misadventures, beginning with the murder of his best friend, Gideon finds himself joining a ragtag army of scientists and inventors who hope to take it back. Heading up this '60s-style revolutionary cell is a brother-sister team--genetically engineered geniuses with silver hair and shining eyes. Aboard their ultramodern ship, Gideon learns the extent of the damage done. When they dive below the surface of the Atlantic, he looks out the window and sees

not an idyllic scene of aquatic wonder such as childhood stories might have led me to expect but rather a horrifying expanse of brown water filled with human and animal waste, all of it endlessly roiled but never cleansed by the steady pulse of the offshore currents.

Carr's future is suffused with regret. It's also rife with mystery and suspense; in every chapter the stakes are raised a little higher, the apocalypse hovers a little closer. This author is a master of the cliffhanger, of cryptic warnings that return to haunt our hero later in the text. Occasional flashes of humor relieve the prevailing ominousness, and a beautiful girl with a huge gun appears at regular intervals to keep things humming. Fans of Steve Erickson's end-of-the-world novels will likely enjoy this adventure in the Internet age, where the sheer amount of information has induced not quantitative changes in the human psyche, but qualitative ones. --Ellen Williams

Famous for his bestselling thrillers re-creating old New York (The Alienist; The Angel of Darkness) and trained as a military historian (The Devil Soldier), Carr leaps into the future for his third novelDand lands with a thud. Set about 25 years ahead, the first-person narrative describes the grim adventures of Gideon Wolfe, a bestselling author who joins forces with a band of outsiders intent on alerting the world to the dangers of excess information untempered by wisdom. By 2023, the Internet has multiplied wildly the ability of power possessors to deceive the general populace, resulting in a globe devastated by ecological blight and filled with near-zombies glued to computer screens. Some groups have escaped this fateDparticularly those living in unwired if disease-ravaged areas of Africa and AsiaDand a few, led by the enormously wealthy and brilliant brother-and-sister team of Malcolm and Larissa Tressalian, have vowed to fight it. These two, with a small crew, bring Gideon aboard their fantastic flying/diving fortress vehicle. They explain that for years they've seeded world-shaking disinformationDfor instance, that Winston Churchill plotted the outbreak of WWI and that St. Paul advocated lying about the life and miracles of Jesus in order to spread the faith. They've planned to reveal these hoaxes as such, to warn about the power of disinformation, but they're stymied by both the cleverness of their own lies and by a new threat that sees one of their hoaxes lead to possible nuclear Armageddon. This book is as much didactic essay as novel, filled with preachy talk. Characters are broad but memorable, and there's some brisk action, but the suspense relies too much on forebodings and cliffhangersDno doubt because the text originally appeared as a serial in Time magazine, from November 1999 to June 2000 (it's been slightly revised for this edition). The prose Carr uses is elaborate, near-VictorianDperhaps a holdover from his other novelsDand ill suits a futuristic tale. As readers navigate it, they won't be quite killing time, but they'll be wounding it for sure. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.