Chung Mae is the only connection her small farming village has to culture of a wider world beyond the fields and simple houses of her village. A ne...
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Nov 25, 2007
John
rated it: 
There were many things I enjoyed about this gracefully written novel, and a few minor blemishes that were mildly irksome. The portrait of small village life in an imaginary (but realistic) third world country in Central Asia, the thought of which originally made me cringe a little, turns out to be so full of wonderful detail and character shading that you can almost smell the diesel fuel emissions from the passing trucks. In particular, some of the best, most dramatic parts of the novel come f
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Apr 26, 2008
Res
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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4 comments
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Dec 16, 2009
Tim
rated it: 
An excellent exploration of how we think of less-developed countries and of where the Internet might go - and also an intriguing plot with believable characters. We're in "Karzistan" in 2020, and a backward village is about to get "Air", the wireless computerless network. One woman sees that everything will change, and tries to get the village ready. But something isn't quite right...
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Dec 07, 2008
Eric
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Another Tiptree Award winner for my book club. This is the story of what happens when the last city on Earth to get online is suddenly given a brief test for Air - a quantum information interface that effectively gives you internet access in your head. The main character, Mae Chung, is with a woman who is killed by the test, and ends up not only with a live and very enhanced version of Air still in her head, but also with the personality and the memories of the dead woman.
The action More...
The action More...
Mar 27, 2011
Tomhl
rated it:
wikipeidia has a nice non-spoiler summary of the plot concept, so I'll just quote it. "Air is the story of a town's fashion expert Chung Mae, a smart but illiterate peasant woman in a small village in the fictional country of Karzistan, and her suddenly leading role in reaction to dramatic, worldwide experiments with a new information technology called Air. Air is information exchange, not unlike the Internet, that occurs in everyone's brain and is intended to connect the world. After a tes
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Mar 28, 2010
Kathleen
rated it: 
An interesting read about the impact of an ultra high-tech internet on a severely backwards third world culture. "Air" is connectivity on a grand scale - the internet beamed directly into one's brain. Want to know more about a particular subject? Just query and it all unrolls into your consciousness. Email, commerce, television - it's all there in your head.
But a preliminary test of "Air" has disastrous results on the tiny rural village of Kizuldah, set some More...
But a preliminary test of "Air" has disastrous results on the tiny rural village of Kizuldah, set some More...
Sep 05, 2009
Andreas
rated it:
It's really not fair to call this science fiction, and it comes with heavy literary images and concepts. Our protagonist is forced to shepherd her tradition-soaked little mountain village somewhere between europe and asia towards technological modernity. Insert beatiful explorations of the clash of cultures and the inevitability of change and progress, add some believable near-future sci-fi media/internet/communication extrapolation, and you have this book. I enjoyed this early, but thought t
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Nov 04, 2009
Alain
rated it:
Wow, really great read. I heard about this book from Amazon's adaptive marketing and from a podcast interview with Richard K. Morgan. Morgan was telling the interviewer that he thought 'Air' was better than his own award-winning novel, 'Market Forces'. As big a Morgan fan as I am (and there aren't many bigger), I have to say Richard's right.
'Air' is not just a good science fiction novel. It's a great novel period. It's one of the rare science fiction novels that is also a really good More...
'Air' is not just a good science fiction novel. It's a great novel period. It's one of the rare science fiction novels that is also a really good More...
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Feb 17, 2011
Lightreads
rated it:
A tiny mountain village in loosely fictionalized 2020 Asia is the test site for Air, the internet beamed right into your brain. Chung Mae is a proper wife and a fashionista – the test and her collapsing world make her become a whole hell of a lot more.
Marvelous. This is how a mcguffin story ought to work – Air doesn’t make the story happen, the story happens to it. But then again that’s Mae all over. She is this intense, homegrown, bootstrapped, amazing kind of savvy, sharp enough to More...
Marvelous. This is how a mcguffin story ought to work – Air doesn’t make the story happen, the story happens to it. But then again that’s Mae all over. She is this intense, homegrown, bootstrapped, amazing kind of savvy, sharp enough to More...
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May 14, 2009
Aaron
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Feb 01, 2010
Linda Branham
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I don't know how to describe this book... so I am just going to paste the review:
"the citizens of Kizuldah and the rest of the world are subjected to the testing of Air, a highly experimental communications system that uses quantum technology to implant an equivalent of the Internet in everyone's mind. During the brief test, Mae is accidentally trapped in the system, her mind meshed with that of a dying woman. Left half insane, she now has the ability to see through the quantum realm More...
"the citizens of Kizuldah and the rest of the world are subjected to the testing of Air, a highly experimental communications system that uses quantum technology to implant an equivalent of the Internet in everyone's mind. During the brief test, Mae is accidentally trapped in the system, her mind meshed with that of a dying woman. Left half insane, she now has the ability to see through the quantum realm More...
Jan 15, 2011
Paul 'Pezski'
rated it:
Air takes place in the near future, in a poor village high in the remote mountains of a fictional central Asian republic. Just as the village gets its first joint TV and internet connection, a global test takes place for a new technology that allows every human being on the planet to access the web directly without the interface of a computer or machinery or any kind. Publicity for the test – only heard in the village at second hand from the nearest town – says that this technology, Air, will ch
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Jan 19, 2011
Ala
rated it:
Welp. This was a weird book for me.
The premise of plugging the net(or a net-like construct) directly into everyone's mind is intriguing. The third-world, dirt poor, farming community was a great setting. The flow was nice and leisurely.
I absolutely loved the descriptions of the village life and it's history. It's peoples, it's mixing and mingling of cultures, it's third-world problems. These parts of the story were well done.
But the rest? The rest just never came t More...
The premise of plugging the net(or a net-like construct) directly into everyone's mind is intriguing. The third-world, dirt poor, farming community was a great setting. The flow was nice and leisurely.
I absolutely loved the descriptions of the village life and it's history. It's peoples, it's mixing and mingling of cultures, it's third-world problems. These parts of the story were well done.
But the rest? The rest just never came t More...
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Oct 12, 2009
GillyP
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Jan 07, 2010
Melisa
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Jan 07, 2012
Isabel
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"We are the party of progress in our village. Ah? But there is another party. It goes around destroying the TV sets. My brave boss Mrs Chung Mae tries to teach our children, our women, our men, how to use Air when it comes, she teaches us on the TV. And the Schoolteacher prevents her! The Schoolteacher actually tries to stop us learning. He breaks the TV! That is what we face! While all of you are going to the moon!"
Air is the future, it is Internet inside your head, and it w More...
Air is the future, it is Internet inside your head, and it w More...
Jun 16, 2010
Scarlett
rated it:
This isn't the kind of book I'm used to reading. It wasn't exactly slow-paced, per se, but it also wasn't terribly plot driven. The story takes place in roughly 2020, and the titular substance is a sort of mind-invading Internet. The inhabitants of a small village in the fictional country of Karzistan have to deal with the way this, and other technologies, affect their lives and relationships. There is some reference to a "digital divide," although that phrase isn't used in the boo
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Jan 15, 2010
Kris
rated it:
I'm working my way through this Metafiler thread of soft science fiction/speculative fiction recommendations. Several awesome books were suggested, so I figured the ones I hadn't read were probably awesome too. The ones I've read so far (like this one) are approaching awesome, but have not yet achieved it. Like all the other reviewers, apparently, I am bothered by the really weird pregnancy in this book, but it's well-written and the characters come to life very well. It's an interesting take on
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Feb 07, 2009
Jason
rated it:
A revolutionary communications technology causes upheaval in the third-world fictional country of Karzistan, and Chung Mae is the only person who can prepare the people of her town for the full implementation of Air in a year's time. Ryman tackles issues such as globalization, the treatment of the third world by the first world, and rapidly advancing technological and social change. All that, and an absolutely compelling character study of a fashion expert in a fictional country at the conjuncti
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Jun 24, 2011
Andrea
rated it:
Mesmerising from the first page, an exquisitely drawn exploration of the impact of techonology on an isolated rural community, and how these "un-technological" villagers change the very nature of communication across the world using the same technology that almost destroyed them. A story of transformation, of unpredictable consequences of change, of the nature of communication, but especially of how solutions to present problems may not always be found in the halls of the powerful and
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Dec 29, 2009
Kiri
rated it:
I am finding it difficult to decide what to say about this astounding book. Geoff Ryman is clearly a master of both imagination and writing skill. This novel is about the impact of technology on the primitive corners of our world, but more it is the story of the power a single person can create for herself, through sheer determination and awareness. And it is also about the power of women, and the ways in which they can be empowered by commerce and technology to rise above societal roles. An
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Sep 28, 2010
Christopher
rated it:
I just really don't like the book. I mean, okay, we can all agree that Ryman's themese are powerful. But I don't believe that the technology in AIR could work the way it's described, I don't believe in other things (not revealed to avoid spoilers), and I really don't like reading about living in the mud for hundreds of pages.
Even so, I use the first part (published as the short, "Have Not Have") in a "Science, Technology, and Society" class that I teach, and peopl More...
Even so, I use the first part (published as the short, "Have Not Have") in a "Science, Technology, and Society" class that I teach, and peopl More...
Dec 06, 2010
Joy
rated it:
I love Geoff Ryman, and this novel is a perfect example of why. Like Octavia Butler, he is amazing at showing the human consequences of science-fictional "what-if" ideas from the perspective of the folks on the ground, the regular people rather than the people so few of us are, those both present at and aware of significant events. His characters are neither naive nor unaware, but they lack the artificial prescience of much narrative. Ryman can be grim, but it is the grimness of realit
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Jun 24, 2010
Purlewe
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Sep 08, 2011
Cow
rated it:
Recommended by the Craug.
The most remote mountain village in the world, the last to get TV or the internet or anything like that--suddenly is thrust into the singularity. If that's even the right term. And it goes horribly awry... They then have one year to prepare. And in that time, everything has to change--the villagers, their alliances and fights and politics, their daily lives.
The village itself is a fascinating place--set in a version of Kazakhstan, 15 or so years after More...
The most remote mountain village in the world, the last to get TV or the internet or anything like that--suddenly is thrust into the singularity. If that's even the right term. And it goes horribly awry... They then have one year to prepare. And in that time, everything has to change--the villagers, their alliances and fights and politics, their daily lives.
The village itself is a fascinating place--set in a version of Kazakhstan, 15 or so years after More...
Nov 15, 2011
Célia
rated it:
A leitura de "Ar", de Geoff Ryman, deveu-se ao facto de a Gailivro ter aberto um blog dedicado ao livro, no qual existe a possibilidade de pedir uma cópia do mesmo para leitura e publicação de opinião. Desde já fica o meu agradecimento pela cópia enviada e pelo pioneirismo da iniciativa.
A ficção científica não é género que leia normalmente e por isso encarei esta leitura como uma variação saudável nos livros que costumo ler, e estava de certo modo entusiasmada com algumas c More...
A ficção científica não é género que leia normalmente e por isso encarei esta leitura como uma variação saudável nos livros que costumo ler, e estava de certo modo entusiasmada com algumas c More...
May 27, 2009
oriana
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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26 comments
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Apr 29, 2008
Zen
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Oct 21, 2007
http://nhw.livejournal.com/592515.html[return][return]This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the interse
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Nov 16, 2010
Wealhtheow
rated it:
I read this years ago but still remember whole sections; it absolutely astounded me. It's the tale of Mae, who lives in the not-quite-distant future. Mae is the exact opposite of an expected main character: middle-aged, not white, a woman, not a revolutionary or particularly gifted or chosen in any way. But her personality is so vibrant, and Ryman writes her world so well, that I couldn't imagine a more appropriate heroine.
Last year I saw Geoff Ryman speak, and he mentioned his a More...
Last year I saw Geoff Ryman speak, and he mentioned his a More...
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