Otto Parsons, a brilliant young Oxford physicist, is missing. The October Men is a story of Otto’s experiment in quantum physics – trying to create zero gravity without going into space – which yields spectacularly unexpected results: time travel. Professor Dan Sibley, ever more desperate to secure funding to keep the experiment running, allows their work to fall into the control of men with an utterly different agenda. Otto's disappearance is the first link in a chain of events, which tie together monumental historic moments including the sale of a lost van Gogh painting, the discovery of rare film footage of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the discovery of a hoard of rare art treasures in a French cave, and the murder of a financial advisor in the Cayman Islands. The scientists initially try to fund the experiment by producing a historical TV series that uncovers the truth behind the Roswell Incident and the assassination of President Kennedy, among others. Inevitably, the show goes viral and attracts unwanted attention. As the project requires ever more funds, sponsorship is sought elsewhere, and control of the equipment quickly passes to a shadowy cabal of international criminals whose activities have global consequences, as they exploit the equipment to take advantage of the financial and art markets. When the truth slips out, human existence itself comes under threat.