Killing Time

by Caleb Carr

Overview

A thrilling journey through the underbelly of New York City to the jungles of Africa, Dr. Gideon Wolfe sets out on a quest to find the truth in this electrifying speculative novel.

Information flows freely in 2023, but is all — or "any" — of it accurate? Criminal profiler Dr. Gideon Wolfe investigates the murder of a friend in New York City when he is suddenly caught up in the company of a beautiful woman, her ingenious brother, and a band of techno-terrorists at war with the world itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446610957
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/01/2002
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Caleb Carr is the critically acclaimed author of The Alienist, The Angel of Darkness, and Surrender, New York, among many others. He has taught military history at Bard College, and worked extensively in film, television, and the theater. His military and political writings have appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, among them the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in upstate New York.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

August 2, 1955

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

Attended Kenyon College, 1973-75; B.A. in history, New York University, 1977

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

SOMEWHERE IN THE MITUMBA MOUNTAIN RANGE OF CENTRAL AFRICA, SEPTEMBER 2024

We leave at daylight, so I must write quickly. All reports indicate that my pursuers are now very close: the same scouts who for the last two days have reported seeing a phantom airship moving steadily down from the northeast, setting fire to the earth as it goes, now say that they have spotted the vessel near Lake Albert. My host, Chief Dugumbe, has at last given up his insistence that I allow his warriors to help me stand and fight, and instead offers an escort of fifty men to cover my escape. Although I'm grateful, I've told him that so large a group would be too conspicuous. I'll take only my good friend Mutesa, the man who first dragged my exhausted body out of this high jungle, along with two or three others armed with some of the better French and American automatic weapons. We'll make straight for the coast, where I hope to find passage to a place even more remote than these mountains.

It seems years since fate cast me among Dugumbe's tribe, though in reality it's been only nine months; but then reality has ceased to have much meaning for me. It was a desire to get that meaning back that originally made me choose this place to hide, this remote, beautiful corner of Africa that has been forever plagued by tribal wars. At the time the brutality of such conflicts seemed to me secondary to the fact that the ancient grievances fueling them had been handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth alone; I thought this a place where I might be at least marginally sure that the human behavior around me was not being manipulated by the unseen hands of those who, throughmastery of the wondrous yet sinister technologies of our "information age," have obliterated the line between truth and fiction, between reality and a terrifying world in which one's eyes, ears, and heart can no longer be trusted.

There are no newspapers here, no televisions, and above all no computers, which means no damned Internet. Dugumbe forbids it all. His explanation for this stance is simple, though no less profound for its simplicity: information, he insists, is not knowledge. The lessons passed on from one's elders, taught by the wisest of them but recorded only in the mind, these, Dugumbe has always said, represent true knowledge. The media I've mentioned can only divert a man from such wisdom and enslave him to what Dugumbe calls the worst of all devils: confusion. There was a time when I—a man of the West, the possessor of not one but two doctorates—would have laughed at and disdained such beliefs; and in truth, during the time I've been here the laws and folklore of these people have come to trouble me deeply. Yet in a world stuffed full of deliberately warped information, of manufactured "truths" that have ignited conflicts far greater than Dugumbe's tribal struggles, I now find myself clinging to the core of the old king's philosophy even more tightly than he does.

There—I've just heard it. Distant but unmistakable: the thunderous rumble that heralds their approach. It'll appear out of the sky soon, that spectral ship; or perhaps it will rise up out of the waters of Lake Albert. And then the burning will begin again, particularly if Dugumbe attempts to forcefully resist the extraordinary brother and sister who command the vessel. Yes, time is running out, and I must write faster—though just what purpose my writing serves is not quite so clear. Is it for the sake of my own sanity, to reassure myself that it all truly happened? Or is it for some larger goal, perhaps the creation of a document that I can feed out over what has become my own devil, the Internet, and thereby fight fire with fire? The latter theory assumes, of course, that someone will believe me. But I can't let such doubts prevent the attempt. Someone must listen, and, even more important, someone must understand . . .

For it is the greatest truth of our age: information is not knowledge.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

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.

bn.com

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 Magazine

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.

George

Startling...a daring step...a book of ideas and an allegorical warning against a future that must be avoided.

Denver Post

Fast-moving...a high-velocity tour of the year 2023.

Washington Post Book World

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

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.
— USA Today

Carol Memmott

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 novel--and 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 fate--particularly those living in unwired if disease-ravaged areas of Africa and Asia--and 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 disinformation--for 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 cliffhangers--no 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-Victorian--perhaps a holdover from his other novels--and 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 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Historical novelist Carr moves from the past to the future in his latest novel. The year is 2023, and narrator Dr. Gideon Wolfe, a noted criminal psychologist, has just been asked to solve the murder of a special-effects man. The victim left behind an encrypted computer disc that revealed the existence of conspiracies at the highest level. Someone out there has been manipulating information to mislead and even terrorize the public. Who are they, and why are they doing this? During the course of his investigation, Wolfe makes some unusual allies who are experts in advanced technology. Perhaps they can shed some light on the matter, before Wolfe's enemies catch up to him. As usual, Carr's well-written prose deftly combines character development and a fast-paced plot. Fans of The Alienist and Angel of Darkness won't be disappointed by this futuristic adventure. Highly recommended for all libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/00.]--Laurel Bliss, Yale Univ. Lib. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

And now for something (almost) completely different from the author of the popular literary thrillers The Alienist (1994) and The Angel of Darkness (1997). Carr's bizarre cautionary tale, subtitled "A Novel of the Future" (and reminiscent of both H.G. Wells's tough-minded speculative romances and Jack London at his most engagingly deranged), examines the consequences of information overload and "image manipulation" in a craven new world in which two percent of the US population is in prison, the Balkans have re-erupted, and an ongoing war between India and Pakistan complicates international diplomacy and threatens the global community's stability, if not its survival. It's all a bit much for renowned criminologist Dr. Gideon Wolfe, whose employment by the widow of a murdered "special effects wizard" leads him to the discovery that the Afghani "terrorist" accused of the murder of US President Emily Forrester was framed by powerful anonymous vested interests. Dr. Wolfe is taken aboard an "airship" commanded by wheelchair-bound genius Malcolm Tressalian (images of Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove instantly leap to mind) and his gorgeous sister Larissa (an accomplished scientist and phlegmatic assassin). Wolfe gradually deciphers the full connotative meaning of the Latin epigram (Mundus vult decipi) that motivates the Tressalians' highly skilled crew, but finds he cannot share Malcolm's obsession with "the deceptions of this age, and my own attempts to reveal them through deception." The ensuing melodrama moves (in and out of earth's orbit, with the greatest of ease) from the uninhabited island of St. Kilda off the coast of Scotland to Kuala Lumpur in search of Israeli terrorist DovEshkol,thence to Moscow, and darkest Africa. Carr whizzes quickly through this entertaining nonsense in a hit-or-miss manner that's perhaps a little too compressed, especially at the rather hurried close, which (just barely) manages to suggest that Malcolm—far and away the most potentially interesting of the book's paper-thin characters—"had actually succeeded in his quest to conquer time." Fun, but awfully sketchy. Carr seems more at home in the past than in the future. Connelly, Michael A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT Little, Brown (400 pp.) Jan. 2001

Kirkus Reviews