Damage Time [Paperback]

Colin Harvey's Damage Time is an intriguing look at a dystopian future, skillfully crossing genres between SF and mystery. In Harvey's vision of mid-21st century America, California has seceded, the calorie has replaced the dollar, and the oil-fueled economy has collapsed leaving the depopulated citizenry to eke out basic needs on an urban subsistence level. Crime, both organized and violent, still abounds and police procedure now includes accessing memories, both of victims and suspects, with often graphic, but always compelling, results. The unlikely hero, cyber detective Pete Shah, earns reader sympathy, after an attack leaves him irrevocably changed, by bulldogged persistence in tracking a vicious killer. Damage Time draws you relentlessly into its dark world, but leaves you with a promise of hopeful humanity even after privacy and personal achievement are just ripped memories and the American dream leans toward nightmare. I would rank Harvey's achievement with this novel in the SF field with Robert Sawyer and in the police procedural arena with Colin Dexter and Swedish author Henning Mankell. Damage Time is a must-read for fans of both genres.

I picked up Damage Time since I loved Colin Harvey's debut novel Winter Song so much. And I am more impressed than ever with his craftmanship this is a totally different kind of story.

Damage Time is a classic noir at first glance. Detective Pervez (Pete) Shah is drinking in a bar when gorgeous dame Aurora Debonis enters in need of his help and after a night in his place she disappears and a body is found. It has some of the classic themes of the genre `The Setup', `The Fame Fatale' and `The Boss', but there is so much more to the story and Colin does a good job in making it all come alive.

Much of this story centers on memory reading or memory ripping technology. Pete is an expert at finding subtle clues in memory recordings. He is the best Memory Association Specialist in the NYPD. New kind of criminals use the technology to erase memories of their crimes from their victims and then selling selected parts on the Web. The mind changing technology also made me reflect a great deal on what makes a personality and what makes ones identity because here it gets a bit fluid. It made me think, I like that in a book.

The protagonist Pete is getting a bit long in the tooth for the kind of work he does but he does it well. Being a bit older is something I can relate to and it is also a refreshing change from the usual twenty-something.

I am impressed by the vivid and subtle world building. Colin uses small strokes to paint a big canvas indeed. There is no info dumps in this story.

Pete is a halfway lapsed Muslim, something that still seems to be able to stir up aggression among the people in New York. In his world money converts to calories, what is left of US just got its ass kicked in the Middle East by the Arabic League, the interest on the US national debt is larger than their BNP, a seceded California is behind a huge wall and inside Homo Superior Californius go about their own mysterious affairs (much like they do today?).

As most good stories it takes care of the characters. There is even some romance. The action gets personal and close-up and it still affect me emotionally when I think about it.

Damage Time is a gritty near-future noir involving chilling mind ripping technologies, thrilling action and a memorable hero. Colin Harvey is a new writer to watch. I wonder what he is up to next. I know I want to read it.

In the novel "Damage Time", author Colin Harvey presents a very bleak vision for America in the year 2050. California has seceded from the United States, and has built a huge wall along all its borders to keep the riffraff out. The southwestern states have quietly returned to Mexico. The remainder of the United States is now dominated by other countries, and is no longer much respected in the international community.

Most ordinary people, like the protagonists of "Damage Time", are constantly hungry. While U.S. Dollars, Indian Rupees and Chinese Yuan are still in use, the primary unit of currency is the "kilocalorie". Yes, everything bought and sold is related to how much food people could buy with the money instead. If they cut too much into their caloric budget for frivolities like nice clothing or tickets to a hockey game, they can always hop on an exercise bike to generate some electricity.

Also, antibiotics don't work any more and petroleum is very hard to come by, making travel virtually impossible. As a result, cities have become half-empty, crumbling monuments of glory days long gone and only dimly remembered. A series of plagues called the "Die Back" have eliminated millions. The squalor forms an important backdrop to the story.

Finally, there's the crime scene. While everything is, in theory, being tracked by electronic databases and recorded by cameras on every street corner, in practice many of these have broken down, and law enforcement agencies barely have the funding to carry out their missions. What good is a camera if no one has time to review its footage?

Our chief protagonist is detective Pete Shah of the New York Police Department. He joined the NYPD just before the 9/11 attacks, so he's seen it all for half a century. He was looking forward to retirement, but is fuming because they upped the age on him yet again. At this rate, they'll be carrying his carcass out of the office in a burlap sack.

The fact is, Pete is very good at analyzing "rips". These are a type of video taken directly from people's memories, and there's quite a market for them -- if they're interesting enough. Drug addicts might sell off a prized memory or two for a "hit", or a meal. Or people might have all of their memories forcibly "ripped", leaving them an empty shell.

That's the catch with this marvelous new technology -- people can't just share their memories, they actually end up losing them for good. For a painful memory, that can be a good thing. True, people can view a missing memory and thus recall something intellectually, but the emotional impact is gone. Those with major amnesia really do become different people, based on the premise that we are who we are due to our cumulative experiences.

Bootleg "rips", downloaded from the Internet, can be very useful in solving mysteries, and that is where Pete Shah excels. He has an intuitive knack for linking different videos to the same individual, going just by a certain feel.

Unfortunately for Pete, he is getting too interested in certain very powerful people who are profiting from illegal "rips". Early in the story, he is framed for murder. Then his situation gets much worse. The investigation becomes very personal, and people around him start getting hurt. Can he find and stop these murderers of the intellect before they can strike again? Will he become their next hollowed-out victim?

I found "Damage Time" to be a very compelling, vividly written story, hard to put down, right up to the end. A very effective plot device is to alternate chapters set in the present with scenes for "rips" in the form of flashbacks. Colin switches to the second person, "you", whenever the story switches to the past.

This doesn't mean that the story is perfect.

First, I should note some things that disturbed me. One of the flashback sequences involved a man caught up in massive racial warfare early in the 21st century -- something called the "God Wars", in South Carolina. Along with searing images of burning crosses came the obligatory ethnic slurs. True, they were spoken by the bad guys, but it still made me cringe.

There is another scene, involving the fate of one character's son, daughter-in-law and small grandchildren -- it could give me nightmares if I think about it too much. Thankfully the descriptions aren't excessively graphic, but my mind was only too good at filling in the blanks.

I also think it likely that not everyone will appreciate the frank discussions on sexuality found in this book -- of just about every variety involving two or more human beings. Pete reminisces about something called a "nuclear family", a completely foreign concept to his younger co-workers. Pete himself shares his wife with a "co-husband", and one of his colleagues is in a four-way relationship. In some ways this is driven by economics -- it's the only way they can all manage the rent.

A key character in the story is an "intersexual". This means she is basically female, but has certain very masculine characteristics. She is not, however, a fully functional hermaphrodite. This was the first time I'd heard of such a thing.

So, there you have it. If the preceding four paragraphs don't put you off, and you enjoy engaging mystery novels set in a dystopian future, you might well enjoy this book. Otherwise, you might consider giving it a pass.

As for me, I think I'm going to read something a bit more cheerful now.