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 worlds very future, Dominique cares for individuals, rather than abstractions and principles. But even so, hes not sure what it is he should be doing... Candle in a Bottle first appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1996. It was a nominee for the Nebula Award in 1997.
Author
Carolyn Ives Gilman has been publishing science fiction and fantasy for almost twenty years. Her first novel, Halfway Human, published by Avon/Eos in 1998, was called “one of the most compelling explorations of gender and power in recent SF” by Locus magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies such as F&SF, Bending the Landscape, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, Universe, Full Spectrum, and others. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, Russian, German, Czech and Romanian. In 1992 she was a finalist for the Nebula Award for her novella, “The Honeycrafters.” In her professional career, Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history. Her most recent nonfiction book, Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, was published in 2003 by Smithsonian Books. She has been a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and Monticello, and has been interviewed on All Things Considered (NPR), Talk of the Nation (NPR), History Detectives (PBS), and the History Channel. Carolyn Ives Gilman lives in St. Louis and works for the Missouri Historical Society as a historian and museum curator.
