Candle in a Bottle: A Novella (Conversation Pieces, Volume 13)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 104 pages
• Published by: Aqueduct Press
• Edition: 1st Edition May 1, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1933500077
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1933500072
• Book Dimensions: 8 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Weighs: 5.6 ounces

Product Review
Interesting intellectual political intrigue, high-minded science, and a climax that moves along at a brisk pace makes the 100-page Candle in a Bottle a trip worth taking. --Tangent Online, July 24, 2006

Product Description
The savants of Institut Sorel, the world center of information mechanics, compute the governing algorithms that give all things their shape and structure. The voyants receive and sort enormous amounts of information. And now the savants say that the whole world, on the brink of a phase transition, is about to change, such that the long-term equilibrium that has locked the world into an "order crisis" will give way to a period of chaos. Dominique, a new, ignorant acolyte voyant, is asked to watch for the random factor that will trigger the phase transition. But the Institut itself is in chaos. Drawn into political intrigue and the savants' and voyants' struggle over his world's very future, Dominique cares for individuals, rather than abstractions and principles. But even so, he's not sure what it is he should be doing…

Reader Reviews
Carolyn Ives Gilman also wrote Halfway Human, another extremely good anthropological sf novel. Compared to a full size novel, Candle in a Bottle felt kind of short. But apart from that it's a great read. Dominique and his brother Gabriel are travelling to the Institut Sorel in the far future to see the Oracle and ask questions. Once there, Dominique is pressured into staying, then thrust into a web of intrigue involving senile rinpoches, scholars with secrets, a mad apprentice, and professors' love-lives. For no reason he understands, no one will tell him anything, and he has to figure out what's going on. The only thing he knows is the fate of the pattern of civilisation depends upon his findings.