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

From Publishers Weekly
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.

From AudioFile
It is 2023. Malcolm and Larissa Tressalian, the genetically engineered spawn of "The Father of the Internet," attempt to break a gullible public's addiction to the Web through an insidiously designed program of misinformation. Their motives may be noble, but their methods are corrupt. When they attempt to reveal their hoaxes, no one believes them. As most nongenetically engineered children would know, crying wolf leaves one with a lot of dead sheep. While it has an interesting premise, the story's characters are merely cyber versions of talking heads with Victorian sensibilities. Narrator Philip Goodwin makes the most of this material, managing effective dialects and creating excitement whenever possible, but Caleb Carr«s dialogue is preachy, often pedantic, leaving Goodwin little leeway for interpretation. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Carr, whose Alienist (1994) helped launch the literary-thriller juggernaut, turns from the past to the future with this anti-utopian mix of sf and mystery, set in 2024. It's Blade Runner times 10 in a world ravaged by technology, especially by the rampant misuse of misinformation, spread like a plague by the Internet. Investigating the murder of a video wizard vaporized by an unknown weapon, criminologist Gordon Wolfe soon finds himself in league with a band of cyber-rebels out to expose what technology has wrought: "a world where intelligence is measured by the ability to amass information that has no context or purpose save its own propagation. The plan is to perpetrate frauds--false documents, for example, suggesting that George Washington was assassinated--and then reveal the hoaxes, proving that facts are no longer trustworthy, and information science is utterly corrupt. Unfortunately, nobody will believe the truth when it is finally revealed. Matters come to a head when a terrorist, convinced by misinformation that Stalin was a coconspirator in the Holocaust, sets out to nuke Moscow. Can the cyber-rebels save the world with the same technology that ruined it? Anyone with even an ounce of Luddite blood will love Carr's premise, but unfortunately, the novel doesn't quite live up to its subject matter. Carr spends too much time explaining the premise and detailing all the horrors that have befallen the information-glutted world; consequently, his characters are more mouthpieces than people. Ironically, in a novel that pleads passionately for humanity, the human voice is nearly lost in the rhetoric. Still, this is the kind of story bound to attract attention. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

Our Review
History in the Making
Though his background is in military history, with his bestselling thrillers The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness, Caleb Carr proved he could walk the historical-fiction walk on the streets of old New York. In Killing Time, a high-stakes technothriller that will leave your head spinning, Carr turns a new corner, conjuring up a haunting vision of the future that is as much a meditation on modern technology as it is an ominous glimpse of technology's consequences.

The year is 2023. Since the E. coli breakout of 2021, hamburgers have become a luxury, the oceans have become lifeless masses of brown sludge, and the air in New York has grown so polluted the mayor advises citizens to stay indoors for anything less than an emergency. But that's not all: A staphylococcus epidemic decimated 40 million people worldwide in 2006, and a devastating stock market crash leveled global economies in 2007. More importantly, the information age has not made good on its promise of a "free exchange of knowledge." Instead, societies have fallen victim to a "love affair with information technology," and their citizens have been virtually brainwashed by information under control of the nations' leaders. The structure of society itself has undergone an immeasurable shift, and only those countries whose poverty has kept them unwired have been spared.

But even a world in chaos can be turned upside down. Dr. Gideon Wolfe, a successful criminal profiler and professor of psychology at John Jay University in New York, is visited by the widow of John Price, the famed special-effects wizard who was murdered only days earlier. Mrs. Price gives Wolfe a computer disc with now-famous footage of President Emily Forrester's assassination, proving the footage had been tampered with and the Afghani accused of killing the president was nothing more than a digital image concealing the true culprit's identity.

A few short hours after Wolfe brings the evidence to his old friend Max Jenkins, a private detective, Jenkins is murdered. Wolfe is then swept onboard the amphibious ship of a small group of resistance fighters led by Larissa and Malcolm Tressalian, who soon catapult him into a new understanding of the world. The Tressalians reveal to him their responsibility for a number of historical "discoveries" that in recent years have discredited everything from the New Testament to human evolution to Winston Churchill. What began as mischievous tampering now threatens to yield disastrous global effects.

Reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, with a tip of the hat to The Matrix, Killing Time combines traditional elements of the mystery and thriller with Carr's unique historical and psychological insight. Although at times Carr lapses into preaching about the dangers of runaway technology, this novel is ultimately a reflection on the vulnerability of history under the control of those in power. And although we can't predict the future for Caleb Carr, we can certainly commend him for offering us this terrifying glimpse of history in the making.

Elise Vogel is a freelance writer living in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

November 2000

Killing Time

It's clear that Caleb Carr hasn't just been killing time since the overwhelming success of The Angel of Darkness -- he's been looking toward the future. His latest, Killing Time, is a big shift in direction for Carr, for instead of conjuring the past to prowl the streets of Victorian-era New York City in search of a killer, Carr delivers to readers a dark vision of the future -- the year 2023.

Even though 1984 has come and gone, it's not too late to follow in the tradition of George Orwell and H. G. Wells, by evoking the world that is to come while commenting on society today. In Killing Time, Carr imagines a world in which rampant development of technology and abuses of power have propagated misinformation and historical revision. By 2023, the world is turned upside down -- disease has blighted Africa and Asia, the global economy has crashed, and the United States has seen the assassination of a female president, Emily Forrester, in 2018.

In this turbulent new world order, Dr. Gideon Wolfe, a professor at New York's John Jay University and an expert criminologist of the new millennium, has his own world turned upside down when the widow of a murdered special-effects wizard enters his office. She hands him a silver disc from her husband's safe deposit box, hoping that Wolfe's expertise in history and criminology will compel him to track down her husband's killers. The disc contains footage of President Forrester's assassination, the same video that has been broadcast countless times on TV and over the Internet -- with one crucial, shocking difference. This version shows that before the video was released, it was altered, with sinister special effects.

This explosive discovery will lead Gideon Wolfe on an electrifying journey from the criminal underworld of New York to the jungles of Africa, on a quest to find the truth in an age when all information can be manipulated. With this novel, Carr has boldly established a new genre -- future history -- combining the best elements of mystery and thrillers with unique historical insight. Breathtakingly suspenseful, Killing Time unfolds as the work of a master novelist. You won't want to waste another second - join Caleb Carr to chat about Killing Time.

SYNOPSIS

Caleb Carr has boldly established a new genre-future history-combining the best elements of mystery and thrillers with unique historical insight.

FROM THE CRITICS

Carol Memmott - USA Today

Fans of Caleb Carr will be astounded by Killing Time, a techno-terrifying tale of the information age run amok. It's a high-speed connection to our most paranoid thoughts about where our wired world is heading.

George Magazine

Caleb Carr's mindblowing Killing Time has ruined the future for me. Now I'm going to spend the next 25 years waiting for the world to turn out exactly the way Carr eloquently imagines it in this twisted, hilarious, touching yarn that involves so many mysterious threads that I'm reading it again. Killing Time is an intimate family drama told against a global backdrop, from a born storyteller who's invented a new way to write.

George

Mind-blowing...twisted, hilarious, touching...an intimate family drama told against a global backdrop, from a born storyteller who's invented a new way to write.

USA Today

A non-stop thrill ride...Carr is a master of the cliffhanger.

Denver Post