Candle

Duncan Lawie wrote this review of Candle, which portrays a frightening but not-so-unbelieveable future, when today's notion of a digital divide is turned precisely on its head: it's a world where not being connected is not only unheard of, but criminal. Read this summary to decide whether it belongs on your "to-read" list, but it's just landed on mine. Candle author John Barnes pages 230 publisher Tor Books rating 7 reviewer Duncan Lawie ISBN 031289077 summary An original approach to the augmentation of human nature with technology, thoughtfully told.

John Barnes has written 11 novels and 2 trilogies since his first publication in the mid 1980s, often delving into the political science (in which he earned his MA) and themes of social engineering, whether set on alien planets or our own. These "soft" ideas are combined with hard science fiction to realise credible environments and compelling stories. The variety of narrative style and subject matter across his career has kept his work fresh while his inventiveness and the quality of his writing continues to draw in readers.

The framing story of Candle opens with the narrator, Currie, being called out of retirement. He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable outlaws. Currie, whose final career was to hunt down such renegades, is reactivated to capture what might be the last "cowboy" and is soon tramping and skiing in the Rocky Mountains. The calm, glowing descriptions of the mountains in winter provide a spectacular vision of a world in the process of renewal. At the same time, the unemphasised detail of how Currie lives his life and the high-tech tools and equipment which he uses shows that the human world has changed. Having piqued the readers curiosity, the story maintains the gentle flow of the narrator's voice as he pursues his search. Despite the potential danger, this almost slips into longeur before the story changes pace. With an adjustment to the narrative focus, Barnes uses the Arabian Nights technique to reveal the underpinnings of Currie's world. The book is subsequently woven around the tales of two old soldiers who ended up on opposite sides in the Meme Wars, generating a patina of inevitability in the world changing events and softening the horror which permeated their early lives.

Barnes' concept of the Memes originates with the computer viruses of our own time, combined with the idea that ideas have an existence of their own. In Candle, Memes have jumped the sentience gap from hardware to wetware, allowing them to run within the human brain, placing beliefs directly and absolutely in the mind, incontrovertible except by the destruction or replacement of the meme itself.

The grim days of the early 21st century decay into the horror of the Meme Wars as the competing belief systems make a promiscuous advance across the minds of the planet until they come into open conflict, using humans as puppets or mercenaries. Beyond human life and death, the memes themselves evolve, becoming their own entity. The mind-viruses, the unfolding war and the effects of final victory on Earth for a single meme are all well developed and ably related.

Even so, Candle is more a novel of ideas. Perhaps it is inevitable that humanity will inflict itself with pain and horror; it may be that an ultimately rational overseer can lead each individual life to cause less pain and align fully to the greater good of humanity and the natural world. The book suggests that a governor inside the mind which could override and overwrite, "clearing" the psyche of its stains might allow us to be the best we can be. Such a position calls into question the value of free will and the meaning of human nature. The resulting debate between the logical and the visceral in which rational propositions are countered with emotional responses, produces an unbalanced and incomplete discussion. Nevertheless, Barnes is a good enough author that he shows the final outcomes of the arguments through their effect on society.

Candle has sufficient structure and purpose to carry the weight of its reflective elements, displaying originality in its approach to ideas as old as philosophy itself.

Purchase this book at FatBrain. It's out of stock at the moment, but they have been able to obtain out-of-stock books before, given enough interest.

Comments

The memes (lowercase) are bad enough!

[Crash Culligan]

In Candle, Memes have jumped the sentience gap from hardware to wetware, allowing them to run within the human brain, placing beliefs directly and absolutely in the mind, incontrovertible except by the destruction or replacement of the meme itself.

Who needs Memes/the-escaped-computer-software for that? We already have memes/regular-old-ideas for that, and they can cause enough chaos as is.

The part about software jumping the computer and landing in peoples' heads like a virus? That is science fantasy (or paranoid delusion if you look beyond Bill Gates' plans for .NET).

But people getting wrong ideas into their heads and acting on them as if they were true? That's entirely too hard to believe.

We live in an age where a lie, told sincerely enough, takes on a life no truth can hope to match. That high-pitched whirring sound is Mark Twain, in his grave, spinning like a dentist's drill.

It doesn't have to be some sort of mutant freak of programming to be absorbed -- if people like the tune coming from the bandwagon, they'll jump on even if it's being drawn by a jackass.

I'd like to blame television for this, but deep down, I know the problem is just people being lazy. They don't understand the news, they don't read the news, they hardly even skim it. Someone reads it to them on the radio in the morning, or they hear appetizing bits around the water cooler, do a little half-assed research, and decide, "Well, that's good enough for me!"

Those memes also use their hosts as armor; try to attack a meme like that, and the person holding it will take it as an assault, and fight back.

And memes mutate quickly. To follow up the bandwagon metaphor above, once people jump on, they'll start belting out the theme they think they hear. Ever play 'Telephone'? You whisper something to one person, then watch as it gets sent around, and when it comes back, it's been mangled beyond recognition. Memes (uppercase) are I assume perfectly self-replicating, but memes (lowercase) rely on peoples' powers to emote, speak, hear, and comprehend. They change en route not because they want to, but because the transmission vector is faulty.

The book gives the phrase "How do you fight an idea?" a sinister twist, but doesn't provide a solution to handling the real-world problem of bad memes.

---

Hmmm... Meme virii...

[DG]

So if one of the core ideas of the book is that it's possible to write programs (and AI programs at that) that run on human brain hardware.

That implies that one could port Linux to the human brain - or at the very least, whip up a device driver.

So, this is your brain:

/dev/brain

And this is your brain on drugs:

cat /dev/random > /dev/brain

Any questions?

Sounds like a good book.

[Tin Weasil]

This book sounds like it plays on age old fears about being excluded from society for refusing to consent to being "one" with the masses.

It's like that whole concept of the "666" mark of the beast in Christianity. Unless you have the mark you can't buy or sell or otherwise take part in society. But if you do take the mark you are somehow damned.

This is a great theme to work with because these "religious" fears are so ingrained that they affect the psyche of even persons who are outside of the traditional realm of Christianity. Hey, just watch "The Omen" I, II and III and see if it doesn't make you a bit uncomfortable.

I think this book will be going on my "to read" list also. It has hit upon one of those "universal themes" that are sure to keep this book current even many years from now.