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By James Poniewozik

May 11, 1999 | There is a millenarian doomsday premise behind Kurt Andersen's "Turn of the Century" far spookier than the "Left Behind" series of Christian Armageddon thrillers or an entire shelf of Ed Yourdon Y2K doomsaying tomes: What if, come Jan. 1, 2000 ... nothing happens? What if, in the cruel aftermath of the odometer's turn, we wake to find abundant electricity? What if telephones, televisions, modems -- all the tools we rely on to live -- still work? What if Christ does not return, the dial tone does return and civilization spirals inexorably into a state of further civilization? What if 2000 is just like 1999, but even more so?

There is no global panic in Kurt Andersen's year 2000, just more Internet IPOs, reality television and a successful new theme park called BarbieWorld. No famine, just a general anomie pundits in USA Today are calling "third millennium malaise." No Rapture, just a Dolly-like science scandale involving electronic brain implants to make cats telepathic. And there's no riot and revolution (except for a bit of unpleasantness in Mexico that barely grazes the American consciousness), but the New Yorker columnist and Spy magazine founder has set this hyper-sharp satire of business, media and manners among that class of people who, had they come, would have been first up against the wall: the broadcasting, finance and technology professionals who through lunches and pulled-from-the-ass brainstorms determine the obsessions and dreams of the global consumeriat.

The constituents of this milieu, as Andersen is well aware from his own career, are by now hopelessly intertwined. The trends of merger and acquisition deals and synergy have put everyone in this megasphere in bed with everyone else. What better way, then, to capture it than through two characters who are literally in bed with each other? George Mactier and Lizzie Zimbalist are a sort of fuddy-duddy, reduced-alcohol Nick and Nora, a highly educated Manhattan power couple (he's a TV producer, she's a software entrepreneur) who work hard, spend quality time with the kids in a spacious downtown home, treat their Hispanic domestic with self-conscious respect, have healthy sex when schedules allow and are by most definitions faithful. Their marriage, filled with arch bitchiness, is one of those urban-elite mutual-defense pacts against the constellation of minor wits and wealthy morons they rely on for work, investment and private-plane lifts. "You know, George, you have a high signal-to-noise ratio, but I find even your noise interesting" is an actual snippet of their pillow talk.

The setting allows Andersen to place George and Lizzie conveniently at or near the center of nearly every major event of the year 2000, which -- this being the only-slightly distant future -- are essentially media events (there's a presidential election, but no one seems to give a rat's ass). The risky pig-liver transplant that Lizzie's father undergoes makes them candidates for the movie-of-the-week and puts them in the center of a newsmagazine frenzy. Lizzie's company puts her in contact with a circle of young hackers with mysterious intentions. Meanwhile, George is producing "Real Time" for a Fox-like TV weblet called Mose Broadcasting Corporation ("the MBC," as it likes to call itself). The stars of the thrice-weekly infotainment series report actual news for part of the week and act out behind-the-scenes dramas the rest of the week. There may or may not be dark political MBC conspiracies against George and his controversial production; George's boss, Harold Mose, a greeting-card magnate and visionary manqué who charts how often the press uses certain descriptors in covering him-- "shrewd/savvy," "contrarian/buccaneer" -- may or may not be making business overtures to Lizzie's company, which may or may not be about to be acquired by Microsoft, which may or may not be interested in a deal with the MBC and may or may not be the target of the above-mentioned hackers, all of which may or may not threaten George and Lizzie's marriage.

As Mose likes to declare sententiously, it's all about "convergence." And George and Lizzie are about to get convergence right in the ass.

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