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Century Next Door #3
Candle
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.
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.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
9 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
John Barnes
258 books198 followersJohn Barnes (born 1957) is an American science fiction author, whose stories often explore questions of individual moral responsibility within a larger social context. Social criticism is woven throughout his plots. The four novels in his Thousand Cultures series pose serious questions about the effects of globalization on isolated societies. Barnes holds a doctorate in theatre and for several years taught in Colorado, where he still lives.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bar...
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bar...
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
July 8, 2019
Last year I read
Tales of the Madman Underground
and liked it fine. With all the other titles in my queue, I was not in a particular hurry to read something else by John Barnes, but then two GR friends gave this one enthusiastic recommendations, adding assurances that it works perfectly well as a standalone story despite being #3 in a series. So that queue got a tweak, and I'm glad.
The backstory, communicated more effectively than I can here, is that there'd been in the recent past a devastating war (or series of wars) among people representing several competing "memes"—memes in this context being a kind of mental programming that's downloadable into someone's brain like software. One of the memes was called Real America. Recalling that one, Currie Culver says it "wasn't altogether a bad thing; Real America tended to give people a cheerful, sentimental optimism and at least a veneer of generous tolerance." Doctors who didn't run it themselves nevertheless prescribed it for patients who were depressed. But unlike rival memes, Real America respected the right of people who chose not to acquire it. Such tolerance was unusual, as the typical first priority of a meme was to influence its host to spread it to other people.
There had also been a Neocommunist meme, and a sort of counterculture (Libertarian?) meme called Freecyber, and One True Church, the ultimate winner, which later shortened its name to just One True and vastly increased its power by installing and remotely maintaining a sort of operating system called Resuna in each affected person.
(Incidentally, there is no similarity between One True and any church I've ever heard of, although an individual's ongoing internal dialog with Resuna does suggest the way particularly devout folks continually seek interaction with God. The difference is that Resuna takes an active part in the conversation. Also, Currie says that "Resuna killed the old me," and "it was a me well lost." Sounds like a born-again experience.)
With One True now in charge, all is well. Or if not well, there is at least hope of rebuilding a world utterly devastated by war, now that everybody is finally cooperating. "Unlike so many of the other memes, One True was not out to enslave the human race to some ideal that was meaningful only to it, or force people into behaving according to some crazed code that was a bad parody of an extinct set of ideas." This, at least, is Currie’s view, or, more correctly, the view that Resuna maintains at the forefront of his consciousness.
He acknowledges that "it's better for people to have their own ideas." However, when those ideas cause personal unhappiness or lead to "behavior that could annoy other people" and/or interfere with One True's objectives, then they have to be cleared with a reboot.
During reboots, people can acquire new memories that enable them to proceed confidently on whatever course of action One True has prescribed for them. "And if what you remember doesn't happen to be true, well, it's useful, isn't it?"
In this way, Currie has been able to live somewhat happily with the wife One True selected for him.
The foregoing may give the impression that this is only a novel of ideas. Not so. Currie was formerly a special-ops guy who used to go out into the wilderness to round up those few renegades (aka cowboys) who didn't want to be reprogrammed. He was very successful, and lately has been enjoying retirement. But now One True has discovered one of those cowboys is still at large, living in the Colorado mountains. And so Currie has one more assignment.
It's unthinkable, of course, that the renegade could be left alone. Currie’s understanding is that such people are "stealing from society, terrorizing homeowners, raping little girls, interfering with ecological reconstruction, and congratulating themselves on what fine free people they are because they don't have a copy of Resuna to tell them they're acting badly."
I don't want to give away too much of the story, but turns out it's possible for someone to be "dememed," that is, to lose his programming. If that happens, "it feels a bit like it used to feel before memes, when a friend would die or leave. All of a sudden there's somebody you keep wanting to talk to and can't, you know? ... Not too different from waking up from a dream, calling for somebody you only knew in the dream, and then knowing they aren't there and can't be there."
I'm guessing the feeling might be akin to being without one’s cellphone.
A person thus awakened begins discovering other memories, which may not be pleasant, and which may reflect badly on One True. (For example, when a competing meme had invaded a city inhabited by followers of One True, One True caused the people to commit mass suicide rather than allow them to be converted.) It's an uncomfortable experience; someone deeply invested in a belief system resists evidence of its imperfections, because "certainty is what most people prefer to truth."
The narrative involves Currie's venture into a snowbound wilderness, and part of that may reflect a personal love for skiing on the author's part. Never having been on skis myself, I felt less engaged. Perhaps that’s a weakness in the story. There’s also quite a lot of summary, e.g., talking about what has happened in the past. Surprisingly, however, I found it very effective. But that may simply be due to a suspicion that something approximately like this is more likely to occur than not. Arguably, in a sense it's already happening.
The backstory, communicated more effectively than I can here, is that there'd been in the recent past a devastating war (or series of wars) among people representing several competing "memes"—memes in this context being a kind of mental programming that's downloadable into someone's brain like software. One of the memes was called Real America. Recalling that one, Currie Culver says it "wasn't altogether a bad thing; Real America tended to give people a cheerful, sentimental optimism and at least a veneer of generous tolerance." Doctors who didn't run it themselves nevertheless prescribed it for patients who were depressed. But unlike rival memes, Real America respected the right of people who chose not to acquire it. Such tolerance was unusual, as the typical first priority of a meme was to influence its host to spread it to other people.
There had also been a Neocommunist meme, and a sort of counterculture (Libertarian?) meme called Freecyber, and One True Church, the ultimate winner, which later shortened its name to just One True and vastly increased its power by installing and remotely maintaining a sort of operating system called Resuna in each affected person.
(Incidentally, there is no similarity between One True and any church I've ever heard of, although an individual's ongoing internal dialog with Resuna does suggest the way particularly devout folks continually seek interaction with God. The difference is that Resuna takes an active part in the conversation. Also, Currie says that "Resuna killed the old me," and "it was a me well lost." Sounds like a born-again experience.)
With One True now in charge, all is well. Or if not well, there is at least hope of rebuilding a world utterly devastated by war, now that everybody is finally cooperating. "Unlike so many of the other memes, One True was not out to enslave the human race to some ideal that was meaningful only to it, or force people into behaving according to some crazed code that was a bad parody of an extinct set of ideas." This, at least, is Currie’s view, or, more correctly, the view that Resuna maintains at the forefront of his consciousness.
He acknowledges that "it's better for people to have their own ideas." However, when those ideas cause personal unhappiness or lead to "behavior that could annoy other people" and/or interfere with One True's objectives, then they have to be cleared with a reboot.
During reboots, people can acquire new memories that enable them to proceed confidently on whatever course of action One True has prescribed for them. "And if what you remember doesn't happen to be true, well, it's useful, isn't it?"
In this way, Currie has been able to live somewhat happily with the wife One True selected for him.
The foregoing may give the impression that this is only a novel of ideas. Not so. Currie was formerly a special-ops guy who used to go out into the wilderness to round up those few renegades (aka cowboys) who didn't want to be reprogrammed. He was very successful, and lately has been enjoying retirement. But now One True has discovered one of those cowboys is still at large, living in the Colorado mountains. And so Currie has one more assignment.
It's unthinkable, of course, that the renegade could be left alone. Currie’s understanding is that such people are "stealing from society, terrorizing homeowners, raping little girls, interfering with ecological reconstruction, and congratulating themselves on what fine free people they are because they don't have a copy of Resuna to tell them they're acting badly."
I don't want to give away too much of the story, but turns out it's possible for someone to be "dememed," that is, to lose his programming. If that happens, "it feels a bit like it used to feel before memes, when a friend would die or leave. All of a sudden there's somebody you keep wanting to talk to and can't, you know? ... Not too different from waking up from a dream, calling for somebody you only knew in the dream, and then knowing they aren't there and can't be there."
I'm guessing the feeling might be akin to being without one’s cellphone.
A person thus awakened begins discovering other memories, which may not be pleasant, and which may reflect badly on One True. (For example, when a competing meme had invaded a city inhabited by followers of One True, One True caused the people to commit mass suicide rather than allow them to be converted.) It's an uncomfortable experience; someone deeply invested in a belief system resists evidence of its imperfections, because "certainty is what most people prefer to truth."
The narrative involves Currie's venture into a snowbound wilderness, and part of that may reflect a personal love for skiing on the author's part. Never having been on skis myself, I felt less engaged. Perhaps that’s a weakness in the story. There’s also quite a lot of summary, e.g., talking about what has happened in the past. Surprisingly, however, I found it very effective. But that may simply be due to a suspicion that something approximately like this is more likely to occur than not. Arguably, in a sense it's already happening.
February 12, 2017
Candle (Century Next Door #3)
by John Barnes
Style: First person past tense.
Characters
Currie Curtis Curran - retired Cowboy hunter, narrater of the story
Mary - Currie’s wife, fragile and unstable, she needs constant management from her Resuna.
Dave Singleton AKA Lobo - Cowboy fugitive (AKA someone not plugged into One True)
Kelly - Dave’s daughter
One True - an AI (though AI is never used in the book, it and all the competitors for the human minds are called memes) comprised of billions of copies of Resuna running in human brains.
This book is book three in a series but it stands alone nicely. I didn’t read the first two and I enjoyed it. It is a well written concept science fiction novel.
The concept is a post apocalyptic world where humans are monitored and controlled by an AI called One True. One True won the meme wars and now nearly all of humanity lives peacefully constantly monitored by their own personalized copies of a program called Resuna (small programs that as a whole make up One True). One True keeps everyone happy and in sync and when necessary uses “Let override, Let overwrite” to fix moments of conflict - literally erasing and rewriting memories if needed.
People who live outside the system are called cowboys and the man character Currie is a retired Cowboy hunter. He is pulled out of retirement by One True to hunt down a particularly dangerous (according to One True he is very bad indeed) Cowboy named Lobo. One True shows him a recording from a young girl’s mind that shows Lobo raping her and her mother. After that Currie is eager to start the man hunt.
by John Barnes
Style: First person past tense.
Characters
Currie Curtis Curran - retired Cowboy hunter, narrater of the story
Mary - Currie’s wife, fragile and unstable, she needs constant management from her Resuna.
Dave Singleton AKA Lobo - Cowboy fugitive (AKA someone not plugged into One True)
Kelly - Dave’s daughter
One True - an AI (though AI is never used in the book, it and all the competitors for the human minds are called memes) comprised of billions of copies of Resuna running in human brains.
This book is book three in a series but it stands alone nicely. I didn’t read the first two and I enjoyed it. It is a well written concept science fiction novel.
The concept is a post apocalyptic world where humans are monitored and controlled by an AI called One True. One True won the meme wars and now nearly all of humanity lives peacefully constantly monitored by their own personalized copies of a program called Resuna (small programs that as a whole make up One True). One True keeps everyone happy and in sync and when necessary uses “Let override, Let overwrite” to fix moments of conflict - literally erasing and rewriting memories if needed.
People who live outside the system are called cowboys and the man character Currie is a retired Cowboy hunter. He is pulled out of retirement by One True to hunt down a particularly dangerous (according to One True he is very bad indeed) Cowboy named Lobo. One True shows him a recording from a young girl’s mind that shows Lobo raping her and her mother. After that Currie is eager to start the man hunt.
March 4, 2010
From http://flyingsinger.blogspot.com/2007...
I've just finished reading Candle, the one novel of John Barnes' Century Next Door or "Meme Wars" series that I had somehow missed up to now. I really love Barnes' SF writing. Although there are many things that are hard to believe in these books, within the world of the books, they make perfect sense. He sounds like he's simply telling you what's going on. The Sky So Big and Black is still my favorite, followed by Orbital Resonance, Candle, and the weird and disturbing Kaleidoscope Century, the book pictured here because its title captures the scarily plausible alternate recent history and near future that these books describe.
Although filled with engaging characters, amazing ideas, and plenty of action, these are not light or cheery books by any means. There are human and non-human monsters, depressing dystopias, and all sorts of wars in them, as well as hopeful social experiments involving space colonization. The future is not a simple time in Barnes' books, and although space plays a big role (Sky So Black takes place on Mars, Orbital Resonance in a hollow-asteroid colony/shuttle space ship whose orbit "resonates" between Earth and Mars), and space colonies provide a lifeboat for small fraction of the population of a fast-sinking Earth, space is not the main point. Space is also not a utopia - people are still people, good, bad, or indifferent, wherever they may be and whatever technology (good, bad, or indifferent) they may possess.
These books connect in my mind to a lot of things, including a sobering article in this week's Space Review called "Space and the End of the Future." I guess the future did fail to arrive as sketched by Walt Disney, and I guess there was never any golden age of space where more than a tiny fraction of the world was engaged beyond an "oh wow" at the idea of some guys walking on the Moon, and then yawn, turn back to the game. The connection is this: things are complicated now, and the future won't get any simpler. Things will get even messier. We will break more stuff on Earth before we fix much of it, drown all the polar bears, and even a space elevator won't get enough of us off the planet to make much of a difference here. That's if we make it through the next 50 years or so at all. Lots of short-term risks that could shut down the whole game.
But space (private, public, whatever) could be part of a solution, could be a tool or a lifeboat or even a source of major help for this troubled Earth. Someday we may need every kind of tool we can get, and when we do, we will be glad for whatever preparation we have made in learning to live somewhere other than here. I don't expect everyone to get inspired by it - my most hopeful scenario for educational outreach is that a handful of kids get excited about learning something, get themselves educated, and start to tie a few knots for the flimsy rope bridge we are building toward the future, even while some other kids are playing with matches, trying to light the ropes on fire. And maybe some of the ropes are actually carbon nanotubes stretching thousands of kilometers into the sky.
I've just finished reading Candle, the one novel of John Barnes' Century Next Door or "Meme Wars" series that I had somehow missed up to now. I really love Barnes' SF writing. Although there are many things that are hard to believe in these books, within the world of the books, they make perfect sense. He sounds like he's simply telling you what's going on. The Sky So Big and Black is still my favorite, followed by Orbital Resonance, Candle, and the weird and disturbing Kaleidoscope Century, the book pictured here because its title captures the scarily plausible alternate recent history and near future that these books describe.
Although filled with engaging characters, amazing ideas, and plenty of action, these are not light or cheery books by any means. There are human and non-human monsters, depressing dystopias, and all sorts of wars in them, as well as hopeful social experiments involving space colonization. The future is not a simple time in Barnes' books, and although space plays a big role (Sky So Black takes place on Mars, Orbital Resonance in a hollow-asteroid colony/shuttle space ship whose orbit "resonates" between Earth and Mars), and space colonies provide a lifeboat for small fraction of the population of a fast-sinking Earth, space is not the main point. Space is also not a utopia - people are still people, good, bad, or indifferent, wherever they may be and whatever technology (good, bad, or indifferent) they may possess.
These books connect in my mind to a lot of things, including a sobering article in this week's Space Review called "Space and the End of the Future." I guess the future did fail to arrive as sketched by Walt Disney, and I guess there was never any golden age of space where more than a tiny fraction of the world was engaged beyond an "oh wow" at the idea of some guys walking on the Moon, and then yawn, turn back to the game. The connection is this: things are complicated now, and the future won't get any simpler. Things will get even messier. We will break more stuff on Earth before we fix much of it, drown all the polar bears, and even a space elevator won't get enough of us off the planet to make much of a difference here. That's if we make it through the next 50 years or so at all. Lots of short-term risks that could shut down the whole game.
But space (private, public, whatever) could be part of a solution, could be a tool or a lifeboat or even a source of major help for this troubled Earth. Someday we may need every kind of tool we can get, and when we do, we will be glad for whatever preparation we have made in learning to live somewhere other than here. I don't expect everyone to get inspired by it - my most hopeful scenario for educational outreach is that a handful of kids get excited about learning something, get themselves educated, and start to tie a few knots for the flimsy rope bridge we are building toward the future, even while some other kids are playing with matches, trying to light the ropes on fire. And maybe some of the ropes are actually carbon nanotubes stretching thousands of kilometers into the sky.
September 9, 2025
One of the greatest books I have ever read, and the sci-fi that has stuck with me more than any other since I first read it 25 years ago. Not particularly because of the plot, but because the "memes" are what I consider to be the most astoundingly coherent and accurate theory of the mind that is to be found in philosophy. If you look at the world today, you can see people running different memes, shaping their lives around the precepts and commands of those memes. The next war almost certainly feels like it will be one of what memes we're running. The only difference between this book and the world of today is that in the book, the memes are in your head, while in real life, you hold your meme in your hand.
November 20, 2017
The blurb on the book spoiled me, which was annoying: I didn't enjoy the hunt at all because I just waited Lobo to catch Currie! Nevertheless, the book was readable and discussed interesting philosophical questions. Is it better to be alone and miserable than to give up your independent thought? This was also the first time I have read about cross-country skiing in English, and it was funny how easily I understood the vocabulary without the dictionary (like "herringboning", "snowplow" etc.). Furthermore, in this book it was revealed why the children were so frighteningly bright in the first novel of the series, Orbital Resonance.
September 2, 2024
A parallel book, best I can tell, to Kaleidoscope Century. Considerably less horrific but very draggy in a number of places, even though Barnes is consistently readable. Like KC but in a different way, it doesn't quite hold together at the end.
November 4, 2016
Three words: glamping bounty hunter. If men chasing other men through the wilderness while sleeping in fancy electric tents and using polymorphic plastic snowshoes seems hilarious to you - then this book will be a fun read. Otherwise, it's in need of a sequel/update: speculative fiction written in 2000 about the Meme Wars is... weird to read in 2016, post-reddit and post-tumblr. How the Internet lets communities react with one mind feels like a writing prompt that's changed a lot in the last 15 years. Barnes is a good character writer, though, and has a lot of love for the scenery and locations he's chosen. He writes an entertaining cat-and-mouse chase story, despite (enhanced by?) long-distance skiing and omnipresent satellite surveillance. Not a lot of female characters - the main love interest is pretty intensely problematic, and the secondary love interest . There's quite a lot of violence - murder, dismembering, rape, explosions - for a book whose central theme is a William Gibson-lite version of free will vs social-technical networks. But hey! Glamping bounty hunters, magical amnesia flashbacks, and a hot tub scenes that raised my eyebrows to my hairline. A great plane book.
March 5, 2017
oh, this was bad. and this was a writer i usually can respect. points for trying to do something complicated; no points for execution.
July 23, 2008
A "meme" here not meaning the Dawkins-inspired term, but an engineered AI program that, in the various world wars and conflicts that turned the last bit of the 20th and early bits of the 21st centuries into exciting interesting times, were initially responsible for trashing the world's ecology. After a few decades of forced peace and reconstruction, things fall apart again in the 2040s or thereabouts--only now, the AI programs have evolved into "memes." See, the deal is that someone cracked how to achieve a dynamic universal translator program--not targeted at language, but at machine language, because every military faction had its own proprietary OSes for its weapons and other critical systems. The universal translator allowed computer viruses to learn how to run on alien machine code and infect them as well; now, more-or-less direct neural interfaces are part of the world's technology and in wide use by this point, and since the brain is treated as just a massively parallel computer that develops its own jury-rigged OS, the computer viruses can "infect" them as well--and in short order, the latest world war isn't between people, but the Memes having infected and taken over people. Real America versus Unreconstructed Catholic and so on.
All that's in the past of this book; the meme One True has taken over the pool, erased all competing memes; everyone left alive on the planet runs a copy of Resuna in their brain, and One True itself is an emergent gestalt program that runs, massively parallel, out of all them linked into the network. Resuna pretty much leaves its hosts alone, beyond making sure they're happy productive citizens (electronic soma, if you will), by altering memories as needed, influencing thoughts, controlling endorphins, so on and so on.
Our narrator used to be a "cowboy hunter" in the first years of One True's victory--those folks who tracked down and brought in cowboys--people who weren't part of One True. He's brought out of retirement to track down the last cowboy who's just re-emerged, and ends up getting freed from his Resuna piece. There are ulterior motives on all sides, including One True's, that shake out into one of the most satisfying endings of the three Meme Wars books I've read.
All that's in the past of this book; the meme One True has taken over the pool, erased all competing memes; everyone left alive on the planet runs a copy of Resuna in their brain, and One True itself is an emergent gestalt program that runs, massively parallel, out of all them linked into the network. Resuna pretty much leaves its hosts alone, beyond making sure they're happy productive citizens (electronic soma, if you will), by altering memories as needed, influencing thoughts, controlling endorphins, so on and so on.
Our narrator used to be a "cowboy hunter" in the first years of One True's victory--those folks who tracked down and brought in cowboys--people who weren't part of One True. He's brought out of retirement to track down the last cowboy who's just re-emerged, and ends up getting freed from his Resuna piece. There are ulterior motives on all sides, including One True's, that shake out into one of the most satisfying endings of the three Meme Wars books I've read.
November 20, 2012
This story is set in the mid to late 21st century after a series meme wars and power struggles did serious damage to the planet and the cities. The elite and important people now live in supra cities at the end of space elevator like stalks high above the Earth, insulated from the damaged planet.
Those who remain on Earth all have a meme in their head called Resuna, which is controlled by a computer mind called the One True. This meme provides a limited telepathy and creates a global system of cooperation to try to rebuild the planet. It manages to control the populace but still give it some individuality and freedom of choice.
But as with all technology, there are those who choose not to accept it and there are people out there without a meme. This story revolves around one of those "cowboys" - so called because they wear cowboy hats - named Lobo who is being pursued by Currie Curran. Curran is retired from his days of hunting down the cowboys since very few remain, but recent reports have surfaced as to the whereabouts of Lobo so Curran is called out of his retirement to track him down.
The real story is what happens when Curran finds Lobo and things change for both men.
I won't give that part away, but it is the heart of the book. I liked this novel because of the issues it explores and the plausibility of the events. What I didn't like was the way Barnes uses extended flashbacks to tell us what happened in the Meme wars and other power struggles that led up to the current time. These long info dumps slow the story down a lot and while they do provide insight into the motivations of Lobo and Curran, they could have been shorter and sprinkled throughout the book.
The ending is good though, and most of the issues are resolved, but a couple things were still unclear. What I would like to see is a sequel that deals with how the supra cities get integrated back into the Earth once it has been rebuilt.
This is the first John Barnes novel I have read and I enjoyed it enough to read another.
Those who remain on Earth all have a meme in their head called Resuna, which is controlled by a computer mind called the One True. This meme provides a limited telepathy and creates a global system of cooperation to try to rebuild the planet. It manages to control the populace but still give it some individuality and freedom of choice.
But as with all technology, there are those who choose not to accept it and there are people out there without a meme. This story revolves around one of those "cowboys" - so called because they wear cowboy hats - named Lobo who is being pursued by Currie Curran. Curran is retired from his days of hunting down the cowboys since very few remain, but recent reports have surfaced as to the whereabouts of Lobo so Curran is called out of his retirement to track him down.
The real story is what happens when Curran finds Lobo and things change for both men.
I won't give that part away, but it is the heart of the book. I liked this novel because of the issues it explores and the plausibility of the events. What I didn't like was the way Barnes uses extended flashbacks to tell us what happened in the Meme wars and other power struggles that led up to the current time. These long info dumps slow the story down a lot and while they do provide insight into the motivations of Lobo and Curran, they could have been shorter and sprinkled throughout the book.
The ending is good though, and most of the issues are resolved, but a couple things were still unclear. What I would like to see is a sequel that deals with how the supra cities get integrated back into the Earth once it has been rebuilt.
This is the first John Barnes novel I have read and I enjoyed it enough to read another.
January 15, 2014
John Barnes, author of Kalidascope Century, has come up with a fast paced novel in Candle that manages to deal quite comprehensively with the subject of societal enslavement for the common good verses personal freedom.
Barnes' story is set in a society after the "War of the Memes", a struggle between universal viruses that have the ability to run in human brains. At the time of the story, the One True meme is being run by nearly every human on earth with the exception of a few "Cowboys" living outside the system.
The meme has the ability to control the thoughts and emotions of its host to achieve the assigned goal, in this case the reconstruction of the earth after ecological disaster. While this is a "noble" cause, one gets the feeling that One True is not as benign as it would have you believe.
The story opens with One True recruiting a retired cowboy hunter to chase down and "turn" - infect with the virus - the last remaining cowboy, hiding out somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
With a turn of the tables, the cowboy manages to capture the cowboy hunter, and in in the process "de-memes" him. From there, a very thought provoking and interesting dialogue ensues between the protagonists concerning the morality and ethics of the situation.
Fans of Heinlein should dig this book.
Barnes' story is set in a society after the "War of the Memes", a struggle between universal viruses that have the ability to run in human brains. At the time of the story, the One True meme is being run by nearly every human on earth with the exception of a few "Cowboys" living outside the system.
The meme has the ability to control the thoughts and emotions of its host to achieve the assigned goal, in this case the reconstruction of the earth after ecological disaster. While this is a "noble" cause, one gets the feeling that One True is not as benign as it would have you believe.
The story opens with One True recruiting a retired cowboy hunter to chase down and "turn" - infect with the virus - the last remaining cowboy, hiding out somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
With a turn of the tables, the cowboy manages to capture the cowboy hunter, and in in the process "de-memes" him. From there, a very thought provoking and interesting dialogue ensues between the protagonists concerning the morality and ethics of the situation.
Fans of Heinlein should dig this book.
April 8, 2015
Candle (2000) 248 pages by John Barnes.
The back cover of the book gives a synopsis. The story starts with the chase, the cowboy hunter, Currie, trying to track down the cowboy, Lobo. A cowboy being an individual that isn't running a copy of Resuna, and is not controlled by One True. Then we get Currie's back story, some more present action, Lobo's (now with a name, Dave Singleton) back story and the conclusion.
The story is told by Currie. His feelings towards One True go back and forth. One True and Resuna are his constant companions fulfilling his mental health needs. Then after he is dememed we hear his back story and some of the atrocities that One True had done in order to seize control of the world, even though now One True is all about cooperativeness and ecological repair. Even Dave says that it's hard to hate One True.
The chase section is a little long and goes into some detail. Currie telling us every time he takes a ration bar and eats it. I guess that gives Barnes more time to give us interaction between Currie and his copy of Resuna, and set more of a picture of what his character is like. The back stories of Currie and Dave were interesting and gave us insight into the characters and the history of the Meme war era.
Very entertaining and thought provoking. Candle works very well as a stand alone novel without having to have read the earlier Meme War books, Orbital Resonance and Kaleidoscope Century.
The back cover of the book gives a synopsis. The story starts with the chase, the cowboy hunter, Currie, trying to track down the cowboy, Lobo. A cowboy being an individual that isn't running a copy of Resuna, and is not controlled by One True. Then we get Currie's back story, some more present action, Lobo's (now with a name, Dave Singleton) back story and the conclusion.
The story is told by Currie. His feelings towards One True go back and forth. One True and Resuna are his constant companions fulfilling his mental health needs. Then after he is dememed we hear his back story and some of the atrocities that One True had done in order to seize control of the world, even though now One True is all about cooperativeness and ecological repair. Even Dave says that it's hard to hate One True.
The chase section is a little long and goes into some detail. Currie telling us every time he takes a ration bar and eats it. I guess that gives Barnes more time to give us interaction between Currie and his copy of Resuna, and set more of a picture of what his character is like. The back stories of Currie and Dave were interesting and gave us insight into the characters and the history of the Meme war era.
Very entertaining and thought provoking. Candle works very well as a stand alone novel without having to have read the earlier Meme War books, Orbital Resonance and Kaleidoscope Century.
April 12, 2011
Easily one of my favorite books of all time. While, on the surface, it masquerades as an adventure tale something akin to cowboys vs. astronauts it's really an exploration of the rights of an individual to live their life free and unmolested vs the rights of society as a whole to be peaceful and productive. The balance between conformity and freedom. Would you give up having your own thoughts and feelings if it means you never had to be angry or sad or unsure or scared ever again?
And cowboys vs. astronauts is the perfect metaphor for that. The cowboy who's out alone in the middle of nowhere for months at a time with no one to depend on but himself and the astronaut who can't even begin to do his job without an army of scientists and technicians to get him where he needs to go in the first place and then monitor his every tiny movement and change.
I'll note that you can, of course, make the counter argument that free-thinking individuals does not necessarily lead to conflict which seems to be an underlying assumption in the universe this story takes place in, at least from the viewpoint of One True. As well as to whether you consider conflict a negative or positive influence.
And cowboys vs. astronauts is the perfect metaphor for that. The cowboy who's out alone in the middle of nowhere for months at a time with no one to depend on but himself and the astronaut who can't even begin to do his job without an army of scientists and technicians to get him where he needs to go in the first place and then monitor his every tiny movement and change.
I'll note that you can, of course, make the counter argument that free-thinking individuals does not necessarily lead to conflict which seems to be an underlying assumption in the universe this story takes place in, at least from the viewpoint of One True. As well as to whether you consider conflict a negative or positive influence.
May 19, 2011
This book was sent to me by a friend in Finland who is also a fan of John Barnes' novels. I love his writing, and this book certainly did not disappoint. It takes place on Earth in a not-too-distant future. There have been multiple wars and both humanity and the Earth are exhausted and in poor condition. Ultimately an artificial intelligence called "One True" take over, and everyone has some SW running in their heads that interacts with One True. Life is good in the sense that people behave well, humanity is working on cleaning up the environment, there is no crime, etc. But at what cost? This is the question Barnes asks, and he explores the answer by way of a very compelling and engrossing story. Barnes is very capable of both imagining future scenarios and running them forward to possible conclusions, examining them along the way. Great characters and an exciting tale!
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March 8, 2008Candle by John Barnes… Good SF and great Social fiction about the future where every body runs a computer program in their heads called “Resuna” that keeps them sane, healthy, working together without problems, and completely under the control of another program called ‘One True.” Except for one man called Lobo, the last of the ‘Cowboys’ people who refused to come under One True’s rule. And Currie Curran, a retired cowboy hunter, is called out to hunt him down. Except that’s not quite what happens.
February 1, 2009
An entertaining and thoughtful dissection of free will and the ethical questions posed by weighing the good of the whole against the desire of the individual.
What happens when ideas literally infect our brains, and is it better to be yourself or allow yourself to be more mentally balanced, have fonder memories and generally feel better overall? Utopia or dystopia? I suppose it's all in how you're programmed to think.
Don't let the quasi-military cover fool you, this is one thought-provoking novel.
What happens when ideas literally infect our brains, and is it better to be yourself or allow yourself to be more mentally balanced, have fonder memories and generally feel better overall? Utopia or dystopia? I suppose it's all in how you're programmed to think.
Don't let the quasi-military cover fool you, this is one thought-provoking novel.
July 26, 2016
Slow starter, but picks up the pace. When it slows down again...it is fascinating that in one slim book, Mr Barnes has damaged the world almost beyond recognition . Then he quietly builds it back up...not completely, but the ending is another beginning . Rarely has two men conversation been this intriguing ; bitter enemies...until they find out it's all a "long con"...by an ...oops almost spoiled it, didn't I? That is how this book works...sure hope these two characters get together again!
December 4, 2008
I was skeptical when the cover quotes compared John Barnes to Heinlein. The last guy I heard compared to Heinlein was John Scalzi, which was ridiculous. Scalzi's books are enjoyable and well-written but they're extremely fluffy compared to RAH. Barnes, however, did not suffer from that problem. I really enjoyed this book and will be reading more of his stuff. It was thoughtful, pragmatic and riveting.
August 7, 2009
For me, this was the weak link in the series. I was hoping that the novel set on Earth would really enrich the series, but you don't get a whole lot more of the Earth experience than was already covered in Kaleidescope Century. While it does add some interesting ideas, it didn't really add up to a full novel this time. Most of the first half was unnecessary, or at least suffered from the wrong pace.
April 16, 2016
It's hard for me to rate the books in this series. I find the world they take place in a sadistic nightmare, and in the case of Kaleidoscope, the narrator is as well. They nauseate me in the same way as 1984 and sadistic pornography. But in the case of Orwell and Barnes I suspect the weakness is mine not the books'. The rest of Barnes's work I like, some of it a great deal.
July 3, 2025
A random pick up that ended up surprising me a bit. I still think it might have been better as a short story, but I ended up connecting with it about half way through anyway. 100% should have gone in a “Brokeback Mountain in space” direction but didn’t.
August 14, 2009
Interesting world. Only slightly engaging.
April 7, 2010
Basic test [yes/no:]: Would I recommend you read this book or not. Was it worth the few hours spent reading it? Am I pleased that I spent the time reading it? --- Yes ---
July 19, 2011
cyberPUNK crossed with a love letter to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
April 11, 2012
Darned good story, characters not quite as engaging as The Sky So Big and Black but a lot more about The Meme Wars. Structurally also not quite as dense... a quick and satisfying read.
October 4, 2012
GREAT book. I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time.
May 7, 2014
I'm perilously close to making this 5 stars. I think I need to read it again juuuust to make sure.
January 6, 2017
This a book that required being read form cover to cover in one go - unfortunately I could not do it but definitely not for lack of trying. Inspired
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