Candle [Mass Market Paperback]

John Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2000

Currie Culver is about fifty-five years old, in good health, living in a comfortable retirement in the Rockies with his wife. In the wake of the Meme Wars that swept the planet two generations before, Currie, his wife, and almost everyone on Earth have in their minds a copy of One True, software that grants its hosts limited telepathy and instills a kind of general cooperation.

In his younger days, Currie hunted "comboys"--people who had unplugged from the global net in order to evade One True, and who hid in wilderness areas, surviving by raiding the outposts of civilization. Now Currie is called back into service to capture the last comboy still at large, a man who calls himself Lobo. With his high tech equipment, thoroughly plugged into the global net, Currie sets out to bring Lobo in.

Instead, Lobo captures Currie, and manages to deprogram him. Thrown back on the resources of his own intelligence, courage, and wisdom for the first time in twenty-five years, Currie finds himself in a battle of minds with his captor . . . with results that will change the lives of everyone on Earth.

In the best tradition of John W. Campbell and Robert A. Heinlein, Candle is a novel about individualism and society that will leave readers breathless, arguing, and demanding more.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It is the near-future, and in the wake of the Meme Wars, the world's population is much reduced, although, thanks to One True, the winning software meme, humankind is now a cooperative, noncompetitive species. One True manages the survivors by controlling both memory and the autonomic nervous system, and a copy runs in the mind of everyone on earth. Or almost everyone. Occasional cowboys, such as the one known as Lobo, purge themselves of One True, unplug from the global network, and survive by raiding civilized settlements.

Currie Culver is the bounty hunter who brought Lobo down--killing him, he believed, years ago in the Rocky Mountains. When One True informs Currie that Lobo survives, Currie must ride out once again on Lobo's trail. What follows is a splendid mix of Western, moral argument, and philosophical treatise. In a skirmish, Currie's copy of One True is damaged, and he is taken to a hideout where the wily Lobo begins to deprogram him. All, of course, is not as it seems.

It could be said that Barnes, best known for the juvenile space novel Orbital Resonance and the decidedly adult disaster tale Mother of Storms, occasionally allows his characters to degenerate into talking heads, but for most readers the meat of the matter will be the hugely enjoyable (if rather basic) examination of that place where the interests of the individual, society, and human identity collide. --Luc Duplessis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In a multitextured narrative that explores issues of free will and of the virtues and dangers of forced utopia, Barnes (Finity) portrays a world in which humanity is linked like a computer network under the "One True." The victor of the devastating war of the Memes--computer viruses able to operate in mind and machine alike--One True is working toward rebuilding Earth and keeping all of its humans happy. Through a program called Resuna, which is installed in individual brains, One True allows anyone to download the experiences and talents of anyone else. Resuna also keeps bad feelings and memories from harming its host. Living outside this overly happy society are the "cowboys," who operate under their own free wills until they are caught and "turned" to One True. Barnes's protagonist, Currie Curtis Curran, was once a cowboy hunter. His final hunt was disastrous, however, ending in the death of members of his party as well as of his quarry--or so he thought. When the elusive cowboy once again appears on One True's radar, Currie is sent after him but is himself captured. The cowboy shuts down Currie's Resuna and, with it, his link to One True. He then shows the hunter the parts of his mind that he has been missing. Much more than a simple parable in tribute to freedom, Barnes's new novel will continually have readers questioning who is in control and who is in the right. Creative science; the creepiness inherent in the phrase "let overwrite, let override," which allows Resuna to take complete control of a person's mind; the complexity of Currie's character; the futuristic slang that sparkles throughout--all add up to a full, rich vision of the future, albeit one compressed expertly into 240 pages. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction; 1st edition (December 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812589688
• ISBN-13: 978-0812589689
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,931,643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My thirtieth commercially published novel will be coming out in spring 2012. I've published about 4 million words that I got paid for. So I'm an abundantly published very obscure writer.

I used to teach in the Communication and Theatre program at Western State College. I got my PhD at Pitt in the early 90s, masters degrees at U of Montana in the mid 80s, bachelors at Washington University in the 70s; worked for Middle South Services in New Orleans in the early 80s. I do paid blogging mostly about the math of marketing analysis at TheCMOSite and All Analytics. If any of that is familiar to you, then yes, I am THAT John Barnes.

There are also many Johns Barneses I am not. I am not the British footballer, the Australian rules footballer, the former Red Sox pitcher, the Tory MP, the expert on ADA programming, the biographer of Eva Peron, the authority on Dante, the mycologist, the travel writer, the guy who does some form of massage healing that I don't really understand at all, the oil executive, the film historian, or that guy that Mom said was my father. I do wish I'd written that book on titmice, though.

I used to think I was the only paid consulting statistical semiotician for business and industry in the world, but I now know four of them. So now I have a large market share of a growing field.

Semiotics is pretty much what Louis Armstrong said about jazz, except jazz paid a lot better for him than semiotics does for me. If you're trying to place me in the semiosphere, I am a Peircean (the sign is three parts, ), a Lotmanian (art, culture, and mind are all populations of those tripartite signs) and a statistician (the mathematical structures and forms that can be found within those populations of signs are the source of meaning). The branch in which I do consulting work is the mathematics and statistics of large populations of signs, which has applications in marketing, poll analysis, and annoying the literary theorists who want to keep semiotics all to themselves.

I have been married three times, and divorced twice, and I believe that's quite enough in both categories. I'm a hobby cook, sometime theatre artist, and still going through the motions after many years in martial arts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Companion novel to Barnes's other works., December 31, 2000

By 

Philip Manitta (Troy, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Candle (Mass Market Paperback)

A damned fine book. In particular it seems to validate, complete, and compliment Kaleidescope Century, his most controversial book. To the newcomer - this is a very good book with which to be introduced to John Barnes. Barnes is all about extrapolating very interesting, and EXTREMELY detailed future histories. His characters' individual stories are interesting ways for him to bring his histories out.

This is the third novel in the history of the 21st Century that many people are calling the "Meme Wars" series by default. (Not really an accurate title, since The Meme War doesn't start until 2048, and the first book in the series, Orbital Resonance, takes places a whole 25 years before the Meme Wars and is concerned with a vastly different topic.)

There is also a short story, Delicate Stuff, in his anthology Apostrophes and Apocalypses. The author's blurb before this piece indicates that there will be a total of 4 novels in this series, but I suspect he could do MANY more.

This book does a reasonably good job of standing alone. You can jump into it without any previous exposure to John Barnes and follow along quite well. But what it does best is provide an alternate point of view to the extremely dystopian Kaleidescope Century. In KC, we see the 20th century unfold from the point of view of 2 psychotic mercenaries. Candle shows us some events that are very closely linked to events in KC, but from the viewpoint of two very decent people who were unfortunately born at a difficult time in history. The themes are the same - who's in charge? Who has the right to be in charge? And how does one balance personal needs and desires against the good of society as a whole? But the treatment is completely different.

On a grander scale, Candle illuminates (no pun intended) two very important background characters who have figured only peripherally in the earlier books - Phil and Monica. Phil and Monica wind up being among the greatest heroes of the early 21st century. Phil, under a previous name, developed the CSL curriculum which figures prominently in Candle and in Orbital Resonance. And later, Phil and Monica author the FreeCyber meme which represents earth's last stand against Resuna/One True.

(to correct a previous reviewer, Phil and Monica are NOT related to anyone in Orbital Resonance.... Although Josh Quare's adopted daughter Alice IS the mother of Randy Schwartz.)

My only beef with this book was the ending, which actually shocked me considerably. It wasn't a bad ending, but after reading Kaleidescope Century, I had a hard time believing that One True would suddenly go so "warm-fuzzy". (As a side note, I think KC would have made more sense if Candle had been published first.)

If you like this one, pick up Orbital Resonance for certain. I generally recommend Kaleidescope Century too... but be forewarned - that book is NOT for the squeamish. Although it does give a more thorough explanation of Disksters.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Concept!, March 31, 2000

By 

Craig Correa (Seattle, Planet Earth) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Candle (Hardcover)

What if the only conceivable solution to humanity's inadvertent attempts at Planetary Genocide is a global computer system that keeps everyone in check via a virus program running in their head and a cellular data link hard-wired to their brain? Not quite total control and domination, but enough influence that nobody is truly self-determinant. And the entire surface of the Planet is monitored almost 24 hours a day, so it is virtually impossible to remain outside the "system." John Barnes asks these questions, and the answers are not black and white at all. Through the entire book I kept trying to make a clear determination of weather the actions of One True (the global computer system) were justified or not, and I couldn't. The book deals with some dark subject matter, but I thought it ended on a very bright, positive note. If you ever shake your head at the insanity of human activity, wonder about the darker aspects of electronic surveillance and/or digital mind control, I highly recommend this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, but left wanting..., June 20, 2000

By 

Richard Finn (Mansfield, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Candle (Hardcover)

I really liked this book and I would recommend it to anyone wanting a quick sci-fi read. I found myself wanting more, and hopefully there will be more in this story line.

Barnes looks into the future with a feeling of validity like that of Kim Stanely Robinson in his Mars Trilogy. I've often wondered myself about some of the ideas presented in this book.

The characterization was well done. My only complaint was that their motives were sometimes confusing to me. Their actions made sense, but only to a degree.

Overall the book was a good blend of modern ideas with a tip of the hat to sci-fi classics like "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451". To some people the society presented would truly be a Utopia, but to most it would be somewhat of a nightmare.

At the end I wanted more to the story, but hopefully I'll get to see it.

But I still want a good description of what a diskster is...