Killing Time - Hardcover

Carr, Caleb

2.8

3,514 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375430768 ISBN 13: 9780375430763

Publisher: Random House Large Print, 2000

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"It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge."

The year is 2023, a time that bestselling author Caleb Carr paints in fascinating and believable detail. Much of the world enjoys the great wealth generated by the triumph of information technology, but horrifying poverty grips many countries, bitter wars rage over natural resources, and the failure of international regulatory agencies has resulted in an expanding black market in all forms of weapons--including nuclear devices. The staphylococcus plague of 2006 wiped out forty million people, the crash of '07 ruined many national economies, and in America the assassination of President Emily Forrester in 2018 traumatized the nation. The Internet remains the main source of information, bombarding people everywhere with news, rumors, and allegations twenty-four hours a day--and creating enormous possibilities for the manipulation of mankind.

New York psychiatrist, criminal profiler, and historian Dr. Gideon Wolfe becomes enmeshed in this world of deception when the wife of a murdered special-effects wizard brings him a computer disc containing startling evidence that the now-famous visual record of President Forrester's assassination was digitally altered by her husband. Investigating this crime, Wolfe enlists the help of his oldest friend, Max Jenkins, a private detective expert in all forms of information manipulation.

When Max, too, is murdered, a stunned and enraged Wolfe sets out to uncover who is behind the Forrester hoax and the killings, a journey that leads him to a secret group of scientific and military experts who--led by an ailing, mysterious young genius and his beautiful, brilliant sister--have undertaken to demonstrate the astonishing degree to which the public can be deceived and manipulated. Seduced in every way, Wolfe joins the team. But are their methods really as noble as their motives?

Relentlessly suspenseful and packed with brilliantly realized characters and settings, Killing Time reveals a new side of a master novelist

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Review:

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

About the Author:

Caleb Carr was born in Manhattan and grew up on the Lower East Side, where he still lives. He is the author of the bestsellers The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness, along with several volumes of nonfiction. Carr writes frequently on military and political affairs, and is an editorial adviser to The World Policy Journal and MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History.

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