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Air

Geoff Ryman

3.61 · Rating details · 2,233 ratings · 219 reviews

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 new communications technology is sweeping the world and promises to connect everyone, everywhere without power lines, computers, or machines. This technology is Air. An initial testing of Air goes disastrously wrong and people are ...more

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Paperback, 400 pages

Published October 1st 2004 by St. Martin's Griffin

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3.61 ·

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· 2,233 ratings · 219 reviews

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Oct 23, 2008 Oriana rated it it was ok

Recommended to Oriana by: Joe R.

Shelves: read-2009, why-werent-you-better, book-i-hate-you

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Oh my god I hated this book. Hated it, hated, it, hated it! Fuck, I just got madder and madder the more I read. But I had to finish it, see, because one of my most favorite people, who is a very delinquent, sporadic reader, has been raving about this for like a year. A year!! He loved it! How could that be? This book is ridiculously bad.

Due to the guilt I feel about this, I can't do a long, detailed screed. Instead I will do a concise little list of badness, all the ways this book let me down. ...more

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Oct 24, 2007 John rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf-fantasy

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of small village life in an imaginary (but realistic) third world country in Central Asia, the thought of which originally made me cringe a little, turns out to be so full of wonderful detail and character shading that you can almost smell the diesel fuel emissions from the passing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 fro ...more

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Feb 26, 2009 Oscar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ciencia-ficción, futuro-cercano, prestados

Pocas veces crítica y público coinciden, y ’Aire’ es uno de esos casos. En el año 2006 se hizo con algunos de los premios más importantes del género: Arthur C. Clarke, British SF, James Tiptree Jr. y Sunburst, además de ser finalista al Nebula, Philip K. Dick y John W. Campbell. Esto de los premios es relativo, pero en este caso realmente la obra se los merece. Geoff Ryman realiza una profunda reflexión sobre las consecuencias derivadas de la implantación de una nueva tecnología en una comunidad Pocas veces crítica y público coinciden, y ’Aire’ es uno de esos casos. En el año 2006 se hizo con algunos de los premios más importantes del género: Arthur C. Clarke, British SF, James Tiptree Jr. y Sunburst, además de ser finalista al Nebula, Philip K. Dick y John W. Campbell. Esto de los premios es relativo, pero en este caso realmente la obra se los merece. Geoff Ryman realiza una profunda reflexión sobre las consecuencias derivadas de la implantación de una nueva tecnología en una comunidad con escasos medios.

La obra transcurre en un futuro cercano en la ficticia región de Karzistán, en una pequeña aldea situada entre montañas, cercana al Tíbet. La protagonista es Mae, un personaje memorable, que aconseja sobre moda a sus vecinas, y que pese a ser analfabeta, comprende la necesidad de lo moderno. Y más cuando una nueva tecnología llamada Aire, capaz de conectar directamente la mente a la Red sin necesidad de hardware, está a punto de cambiar el mundo para siempre. Una tecnología que además viene impuesta, te guste o no, estés preparado o no, llegando a hacerte pensar si en lugar de dotarte de mayor libertad, lo que está haciendo es esclavizarte aún más.

La novela es una reflexión que enfrenta lo nuevo con lo tradicional, y aboga en si es posible renunciar a la propia identidad a costa de desaparecer. En la historia también se reflexiona sobre la fortuna (o no) de haber nacido en un mundo en el que la tecnología te acompaña desde que naces, convirtiendo a los países más desfavorecidos en verdaderos parias tecnológicos. La gente de la aldea protagonista siente curiosidad por el mundo moderno que hay ahí afuera, pero de igual manera, temor por los cambios que esto pueda acarrear. Por ejemplo, el primer televisor con Internet que llega a la aldea, unos lo ven como la posibilidad de ver películas de kun-fu y deportes, y otros, como Mae, como una manera de acceder a canales de moda.

Pero sobre todo, ’Aire’ es un novela humana, donde observamos las relaciones de los personajes, sus luchas, celos y enfrentamientos, así como su amistad y amor. No obstante, la historia no sirve solo para reflexionar, también resulta una lectura entretenida, y en ningún momento se hace pesada. Quizá lo que menos me haya gustado sea lo del embarazo, que veo realmente innecesario.

’Aire’ no solo puede ser apreciado por el lector aficionado a la ciencia ficción, sino por un lector que aprecie la buena literatura.
...more

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Oct 28, 2009 Alain Dewitt rated it it was amazing

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 literary no ...more

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Jan 23, 2019 Vanessa - My own book of disquiet rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019books, desafios-literários, reading-around-world, winter-reads

O que achei deste livro? Não sei dizer ao certo.
A premissa é muito interessante e teria certamente muito potencial...
Não gostei nada do início - as coisas só começam a fazer (algum), sentido por volta da página 100 - e detestei o final.

Valerá a pena ler?
Apesar de tudo eu diria que sim.
Avance, sobretudo, no caso de não se importar em considerar algum do tempo de leitura perdido, um certo desapontamento final, e/ou de, tal como eu, ter o (péssimo?) hábito de não desistir de uma leitura depois de ...more

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Mar 27, 2011 Tomislav rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-stars, science-fiction

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 test of 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 test of Air is imposed on Mae's unprepared mountain town, everyone and everything changes, especially Mae who was deeper into Air than any other person."

I was fascinated by the portrait of complex individuals of the village Kizuldah in the last days of a traditional central Asian culture. Just as the expansion of Mae's universe to include the national capital, and even the Western world, begins to wear repetitious, dramatic events threaten the entire village. The book is successful simply on a plot level, but there is more.

Mae is pulled through a meteoric transition from her traditional culture to an advanced information age. Of course, gender roles are an early casualty. We observe this through Mae's evolving eyes. Far from the woman=good;man=bad theme typical of the 1970s gender fiction, the astute reader will pick up that Mae's perspectives on the subject are limited by her own prejudices as well. There is a double standard in her classification of aggressive males as "sharks"; while non-aggressive males are "boys". But gender is only part of it. It is an openness to change, and fluidity, that primarily characterizes the difference between old and new. What is gained and what is lost?

Air itself is given a series of meanings. First, it is a technology of nearly limitless mind-to-mind information exchange. Then, it is an 11-dimensional physical reality of string theory and inflationary cosmology, as described in Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. Finally, it is the spiritual component of nature in one of the traditional cultures of the fictional region. The unification of these three diverse concepts into "air" gives the novel rare philosophical power.

I highly recommend this book. Air won the British Science Fiction award, the Arthur C. Clarke award, and the James Tiptree award, and was nominated for many others. ...more

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Jul 04, 2007 Wealhtheow rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, pocmaincharacters

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 ambivalence abou ...more

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Apr 29, 2008 Zen Cho rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sff, asia

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 21, 2008 Res rated it really liked it

Shelves: sff, tiptree_award

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The one where Air is going to put the internet inside everyone's brain, and in a tiny village between Russia and China, where there's only one television set and no one has ever seen the internet, fashion consultant Mae is forced into a very strange future.

Oh, man, it's really hard to rate this. I absolutely adored everything about it but one thing, and that one thing is so so so stupid that it's messing up my enjoyment of the rest of the book.

Let's get the stupid thing out of the way -- and it' The one where Air is going to put the internet inside everyone's brain, and in a tiny village between Russia and China, where there's only one television set and no one has ever seen the internet, fashion consultant Mae is forced into a very strange future.

Oh, man, it's really hard to rate this. I absolutely adored everything about it but one thing, and that one thing is so so so stupid that it's messing up my enjoyment of the rest of the book.

Let's get the stupid thing out of the way -- and it's spoilery because it doesn't even happen until page 200 or so: Mae gets pregnant. In her stomach. Yes, her literal food-digesting stomach. And this is because ... she has oral sex during her period and then kisses the guy afterwards!

I hate this so much. (Also: Mae continues to menstruate, but gets morning sickness at the same time, as if the author thought menstruation and morning sickness were caused by some kind of magic, rather than hormones; there's a baffling wrongheadedness about pregnancy in general.) It's not magic realism or whimsy; it's just dumb. It's as if you'd given me a story which expected to be taken seriously as happening in the literal real world, and then had someone swallow a watermelon seed and have it sprout in their stomach and grow out of their mouth, only with bonus creepy ambivalences about femaleness and reproduction -- which is all the worse because the rest of the book is so unusually good about women and the realities of physical life.

OK. Whew. Got that out of my system. Now to the rest of the book, which I genuinely loved:

It is, of all impossible things, a heartwarming and uplifting story about the fast pace of technological change. The initial test of Air results in two deaths in the village, and Mae, through an accident, winds up with one of the dead women living in her head (note: in context, this is plausible, unlike stomach pregnancy) and also is permanently connected with Air even though no one is supposed to be using it yet. These two things result in her having to confront the future, and she drags the entire village with her, and there are friendships and enmities, betrayals, love, meditations on time and change. By the end of the book, I felt great affection even for the people I hated. It was beautiful.

So I'm going to go ahead and give it four stars in spite of that one thing, because I loved the rest so much. Just pretend Mae gives birth out of her uterus like the entire rest of the human race, and it will be fine. ...more

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Mar 18, 2014 Glenn rated it it was ok

Shelves: nope

Firstly, I take issue with this book being listed on a best SciFi of the last decade list where I found it.

This is NOT a good SciFi book. The fictional science is weak at best, and outright fantasy at worst. This book would be a prime example of why many people see the genres of SciFi and fantasy to be blurred. In my opinion if you're going to write about implausible, bad science, just leave it and call it magic.

That is not to say this was a bad book, but simply a bad SCIENCE fiction book.

What i ...more

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May 20, 2012 Mike rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy, sci-fi-fantasy-club

Sci fi club book.
It's a good thing this was an assignment, although we did feel it
started off a little slowly, we kept at it - and did enjoy it.
The basic premise describes the next generation of world wide
connectivity, AIR, a method that accesses and explores the Internet
directly by the mind. An initial trial goes very wrong, overloading
many people to the point of suicide, but the full launch is still on
schedule. In a little and backward village in a Third World country
one of the villagers, Mae ...more

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Feb 06, 2011 Lightreads rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, science-fiction

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 cut herself ...more

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Jul 27, 2013 Ian Prest rated it it was ok

Shelves: book-club

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 28, 2017 Rachel (Kalanadi) rated it liked it

Shelves: winners-clarke, science-fiction

This is about the coming of technology, and the old way of life dying to make way for the new. It's about grieving and celebrating that change and struggling to learn how to live in a new way. I really loved the ideas and the people. The weird pregnancy storyline did put me off at the end though.

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May 02, 2018 Ahc rated it did not like it

I gave up on page 9. seems patronising, badly written, ugh cringe. I borrowed this book at the last second because I love random sci fi....i have so many regrets

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Sep 23, 2013 Mark rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf

There is a most excellent book inside of this novel. Kizuldah is a poor back-water village in fictionalized Kazakhstan, where only the richest family owns a TV/computer and they let their neighbors use to watch kung-fu movies. However the internet is coming, specifically Air - a new wireless technology that is beamed directly into the brain. A trial run of Air goes wrong, but leaves the village woman Chung Mae with a permanent internet connection along with some side effects. It is both an oppor There is a most excellent book inside of this novel. Kizuldah is a poor back-water village in fictionalized Kazakhstan, where only the richest family owns a TV/computer and they let their neighbors use to watch kung-fu movies. However the internet is coming, specifically Air - a new wireless technology that is beamed directly into the brain. A trial run of Air goes wrong, but leaves the village woman Chung Mae with a permanent internet connection along with some side effects. It is both an opportunity and a curse. Chung Mae realizes how disruptive this technology will be, and spends the book fighting to learn how to use the internet for herself and at the same time trying to teach / brow-beat her fellow villages into getting prepared for the new world.

I love the depiction of Chung Mae. She is selflessly trying to help the village at the same time she is selfishly trying to make money off the whole process. She is trying to band the village together at the same time as her pride causes conflicts right and left. She is wise and foolish, and tries to make the best of it either way. At one point the computer teaching program she is using puts her in the role of Owl, which to the West symbolizes wisdom but in her village culture symbolizes Death, which suggests both how the traditional village and modern internet collide and how Chung Mae's personality is both helpful and abrasive.

There are only a few things that keep me from giving this book 5 stars. There is a physically impossible pregnancy, which serves one the metaphorical level as the coming of the future, but on the practical level is so bizarre that it was off-putting. There are also some "super-powers" (if you will) that Chung Mae gets from her connection to Air. Mostly these are occasional visions of the past and future, that work well with the themes of the book. However there are also a few parts that imply Chung Mae has control over time and space which are dissonant weird and unnecessary.

So on the whole this is an excellent voyage, only marred by a few unexpected and jarring potholes on the way. ...more

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May 27, 2016 Michaela rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Čo by sa stalo, keby bol internet (airnet) dostupný pre každého? Nepotrebovali by ste počítače, ani inú elektroniku, úplne by stačil len váš mozog a realita by zrazu dostala 11 dimenzií.
Príbehom nás vedie Mae, miestna dedinská udávačka módy, v zapadnutej dedine kdesi vysoko v horách. Miestny kolorit je úžasne podaný - aj susedia, aj ich charaktery - a ako sa menia - a ten, kto bol na začiatku nepríjemný, bude nepríjemný aj na konci, to áno, ale iným spôsobom. Dedina prežívala... Mix etník a nábo ...more

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Apr 29, 2012 David rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, dnf

I really did try to finish this book... but eventually gave in around the halfway mark. It wasn't that I found it particularly horrendous, more that life is too short, there is other stuff I want to read and I wasn't particularly enjoying it.

I got annoyed how the heroine (who was at first very likeable) was ALWAYS right and much cleverer than all the other characters, who were repeatedly portrayed as ridiculously stupid in comparison. And everything bad that could've happened to her did - so muc ...more

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Jun 24, 2011 Andrea rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, my-collection, favourites

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 privileged ...more

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Jul 08, 2013 Deanne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasyandscifi

Set in the near future in what appears to be Kazakstan, Mae lives in a village which is the last place to be connected to the net. The next step is air which allows people to connect to the web straight to the brain, but there has to be a test of the new technology, a test which creates problems as well as oppotunities.
Takes a little while to get started but the characters range from loveable, to quirky, to strange etc.

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Jul 04, 2007 Tim Hicks rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Sci-fi fans

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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Sep 30, 2016 Michael Battaglia rated it it was amazing

The cover copy reads like the entrance to some futuristic cyberpunk horror show but the story stars a middle-aged Asian woman who can't read yet still tangles with the government and eventually climaxes with a natural disaster. And despite everyone getting access to a form of the Internet, no one really talks about the very spine of the World Wide Web, namely adult entertainment and cats (and those dark, dark corners where such things are intermingled). What gives?

Ryman is an author whose name I The cover copy reads like the entrance to some futuristic cyberpunk horror show but the story stars a middle-aged Asian woman who can't read yet still tangles with the government and eventually climaxes with a natural disaster. And despite everyone getting access to a form of the Internet, no one really talks about the very spine of the World Wide Web, namely adult entertainment and cats (and those dark, dark corners where such things are intermingled). What gives?

Ryman is an author whose name I've seen around a lot, generally attached to awards (for those keeping score and feeling more validated by reading books that are winners, this one won the British Science Fiction Association Award, the James Tiptree, Jr Award and the Arthur C Clarke Award) but given his relatively sparse output (only eight novels since 1984) I had never really encountered him until I bought this book seven years ago and got around to reading it now. But having read it, I'm very much looking forward to anything else I have buried in the stacks from him.

He appears to be one of those few writers that seem to veer back and forth from fantasy to SF and some of his books could probably be construed as having elements of both. Here he takes what could be a plausible SF scenario, namely the introduction of a quantum Internet that people can access via their minds (termed "Air) to one of the last places on Earth that hasn't been patched into the Net, a tiny village deep in the country of Karzistan (apparently based on Kazakhstan and much like that country having a mix of Asian and Muslim populations). The story focuses on Chung Mae, the aforementioned middle aged woman who spends her days doing business by advising people on fashion choices, navigating the various petty alliances and brokering deals that can only happen when the local phone book is about ten pages long and easily memorizable.

All is going well until the local government decides to do a pre-test of Air before going with the big launch later in the year. But as anyone who has ever experienced pretty much any computer product ever, there's a reason you don't beta test stuff on people and the initial test goes quite wrong, resulting in the deaths of two people and Chung Mae getting a weird kind of access that might make her very useful and very hated at the same time, if she can just get her head around it. Except that her head appears to exist in more than one dimension now. Sounds like a good time for a customer service call!

As I alluded earlier, the bare bones of this could have been a fairly terrifying scenario where the implementation of Air caused everyone in the village to go mad and force us to watch as the previously stable village descends in barbarity and depravity. However, Ryman goes somewhere much more interesting with it, even if people expecting hardcore SF are going to be extremely disappointed. There was every chance he could have made this into a sort of Third World "Neuromancer" showing a woman learning how to hack into the Net like a pro and bring the fight to the Man but he's far more interested in the personalities of the villagers themselves, spending his time throughout the book taking us through changes both gradual and catastrophic for the village.

Despite having an old and bitter woman stuck in her head due to the failed test, Mae seems to be the only person who can figure out how to make Air work for them in ways that they can handle and a lot of the tension in the book is her negotiating with the various forces involved to figure out the best outcome for everyone. The village doesn't necessarily want to change but she understands that its inevitable and a lot of what Ryman effectively explores here is how the introduction of something that could change their lives forever has the potential to completely remake their society, and in the process maybe upset the balance completely. With her access to Air giving her access to both the future and the past, Mae is doing her best to drag everyone kicking and screaming into a future that is inevitable and doesn't particularly care if they're ready for when it arrives.

A lot of this wouldn't work if he didn't delve deeply into the lives of these people, depicting them are human beings that live simply but aren't simplistic, giving them petty jealousies, capacity for grand kindnesses and the ability to make very poor decisions even with the proper information. Its not too long before Mae gets pegged as the crazy one and becomes a bit of an outcast but the real joy in reading the book is watching her interactions with friends and neighbors, as they continually adjust to the changes in their lives, only some of which are due to the introduction of Air. He's not afraid to make it all very messy, giving Mae not one but two love interests, having sympathetic characters turn on other characters for reasons that often aren't the most noble. He doesn't shy away from the cost of being a maverick, as Mae's crusade threatens to split families apart, including her own. But for people willing to look past the lack of typical SF elements, its easy to become immersed in the life of the village and its rhythms, the poor ones, the ones sleeping around, the arguments that make perfect sense in their culture even if we can't immediately grasp what the problem is. Ryman makes it feel like he's lived with these people and invests every conversation with emotional stakes that range from the low-key to the desperate, even in scenes that should come across as wacky, like Mae's slightly addled conversation with a surgically altered dog (whose ultimate request is heartbreaking) or scenes that should fairly drip with cliche, like her relationship with her lazy husband or the noble man she takes for a lover for a while. Everyone here embodies themselves and no one else.

It works so well that Ryman gets to really punch us during the climax to the novel, where a disaster that Mae has been warning about for some time finally comes to pass. In the grand tradition of Connie Willis' "Doomsday Book", he takes a bunch of people that we have come to know very well and proceeds to put them in mortal danger with no guarantee of survival, making for tense reading as something unstoppable unfolds that even the magic of Air can't fix. And that isn't even the last obstacle for Mae to overcome.

Its a fine novel that reads densely and both creates a world we've never seen and predicts the world to come. The scenario could have been handled clumsily but instead comes across as remarkably prescient and presented to us with a grace that approaches a spare beauty at times. These people aren't us but they're coping with a world changing far too rapidly for their liking, forced upon them by people who aren't entirely sure what they're doing. In 2004 when this was published the Internet was already changing everything, we just didn't know the extent of how utterly comprehensive it would be. Now when every generation can barely take stock of the changes to society before the next wave arrives, Ryman shows us how to find the balance, to focus on just living, to understand our place in the scheme of it all and ultimately realizing that nothing created by people should control us so completely that we can't find a way to make it work for ourselves. ...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Kenneth A. Mugi rated it it was ok

I brought 'Air' on a whim at a Borders' closing down sale. I saw the cover, liked the art and procured it for the less than a McDonald's value meal. I also brought it because I wanted to 'expand my reading horizons' by consuming something other than my standard fare of male heroic violence.

I don't believe that I wasted my time; I just think that this book is not written for me. I believe it is written by a very serious person for other very serious people who want to think about things in a ver I brought 'Air' on a whim at a Borders' closing down sale. I saw the cover, liked the art and procured it for the less than a McDonald's value meal. I also brought it because I wanted to 'expand my reading horizons' by consuming something other than my standard fare of male heroic violence.

I don't believe that I wasted my time; I just think that this book is not written for me. I believe it is written by a very serious person for other very serious people who want to think about things in a very serious manner. I do like serious things and concepts that raise my eyebrows, but I also enjoy humor and characters that have a sense of humor. This novel has none of the latter.

The story reads something along the lines of:

'A new medium of information consumption is coming and one woman has to teach her rural village how to transition to this new way of life.'

It's a good idea and Mr. Ryman does get some excellent mileage out of how a technology deprived community would embrace a massive paradigm shifting innovation such as the Internet. Unfortunately the main character, Mei, gets embroiled in a series of conflicts are directly linked to the primary arc of the book. There's adultery, youth revolt, evil corporations, gangsters and military dictatorships to be fought against with only intellect and words.

Although the book only covers a year, I often struggled with the limited time frame. By the time I was on page 200 I thought that at least five years had passed, if not a decade. I constantly had to remind myself that all this was only happening within a week of the previously tumultuous event and Mei could not fail now because, she would not fail.

Sometimes I felt as the writer was padding the novel with additional obstacles for Mei to overcome so that he could hit his word count. This meant that I was often wondering what new obstacle would be invented for her to triumph through the idea of, 'Men are stupid.' It started as a logical reason for her to have such immediate success in her rural and religious town. Here was a town where ignorance and arrogance had been so embedded in the ruling class (males) that they could not see they had long fallen short of who they were. Yet once she moved outside of that sphere, it became more difficult the successful men Mei encountered were stupid enough to overpowered by a fast talking peasant. The template eventually boiled down to Mei accusing the man, sometimes subtly, of being stupid or a coward, and then the male antagonist would shrivel up their previously highlighted intellect just so that they could provide three or four humiliating sentences / actions that Mei could use against them later on.

At the very end of the novel Mr. Ryman seems to try and adjust this balance with some key scenes that highlight a lack of understanding on Mei's part about men but by this time it is really too late. It had become difficult to read about a woman who cared only for her community when she could also obtain what she deserved.

On the positive, the book is excellently written. Its prose is easy to slide into and the way Mr. Rynman breaks up the rhythm of his writing through emails in the end chapters is truly quite extraordinary. Also, the theme of overcoming ignorance and adapting to change is handled in a unique way that made me completely engaged until around page 250 when it started to feel overly extended.

As I said previously, this is a very serious book about very serious ideas and if that is your particular Sunday afternoon fun then you should love this. I like Mr. Ryman's writing style and will definitely look out for more of his works. In relation to 'Air', however, the best part of this book was being able to cross it off my reading list. ...more

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Jun 21, 2013 Daniel Roy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

As William Gibson said, "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." I travel a lot, and I see the evidence of this everywhere I go; I once sat in an Aboriginal village council meeting in rural India where discussions on the necessity of clean running water were interrupted by the village leader's ringtone.

Air is the story of that point when the future will be evenly distributed, and the one village on Earth that's the least ready to welcome it. The novel does something As William Gibson said, "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." I travel a lot, and I see the evidence of this everywhere I go; I once sat in an Aboriginal village council meeting in rural India where discussions on the necessity of clean running water were interrupted by the village leader's ringtone.

Air is the story of that point when the future will be evenly distributed, and the one village on Earth that's the least ready to welcome it. The novel does something I've never seen before: it starts with a great SF concept, then explores those who are the absolute farthest from its reach. The result is a novel about the motives of poverty, resourcefulness, vision, and the need to embrace inevitable change.

"Air" is a technology that will soon join the world's minds into a global, wireless Internet. Chung Mae, a poor peasant who fancies herself a fashion consultant, lives in a fictional Central Asian mountain village whose people are arguably the least ready for this quantum leap in human development. When the UN performs a test to verify their readiness, tragedy ensues and Mae's spirit becomes intertwined with that of a dying woman. But Mae also recognizes the inevitability of Air, and she sets about learning and teaching the ways of the future to her divided village.

Mae is amazing. She's resourceful, smart, visionary, but she's also kind of messed up emotionally. She has her flaws and her hangups, which just make her victories and her strengths more vivid. She's the kind of character I loved, even as I wished someone would slap some sense into her, in particular when it comes to men.

The story itself, when it focuses on Mae's efforts to rally her village, is gripping and beautiful. Ryman writes about the poor fictional Karzistani village with lucidity and compassion. He describes the mindset of rural villagers without the condescension one would expect with such a subject matter. Sure, there are times when I wished the villagers were less wrapped up in their own little conflicts; but I suspect Ryman was writing about the whole of humanity when he wrote these things. One just needs to look at climate change and alternative energies to realize that Mae's Karzistani village is us. Well; with the exception that they ultimately learn to change and grow. Jury's still out whether we as a species are capable of such a brave step forward.

Where the novel was less than stellar for me is when it headed down predictable "literary fiction" paths. The middle part in particular drifted into literary metaphor territory involving a weird pregnancy and a talking dog. I kept wishing for the pregnancy angle to go away, because every time it was mentioned I would lose part of my suspension of disbelief. The novel was doing so well before that, too.

Air itself is intriguing, but exploration and a bit of exposition didn't help it. I eventually realized that it wasn't so much a SF concept as a magic realism one; for that reason, I hesitate to classify the novel as science fiction, though it sure blends genres quite skillfully and unexpectedly. It's not even a problem that Air doesn't make much sense; ultimately, this novel is about what comes before, and Air itself is the vague threat on the horizon.

But all these qualms aside, Air was a compelling, fascinating read about the necessity of change, and how the best of us can help the worst of us to adapt if we'd only listen. The future is coming whether we like it or not; but it behooves us to listen the day a Chung Mae shows up to teach us about it. ...more

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Dec 28, 2010 Paul Perry rated it it was amazing

Shelves: contemporary, fiction, literary, sf, society, read-in-2011, male-author

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 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 change the way everybody lives. In the few minutes that the test is active life is changed forever for Mae, fashion guru to the women of the village.

This allows Ryman to examine the impact of technologies that are often talked about as having the potential to level the playing field, to more easily bring information to those that have not had it in a world where information is the basis of power and wealth. One one level he uses this to do the classic science fiction job of using the future as a mirror for the present – the Air technology representing the effect of the World Wide Web – and how claims of empowerment are often made false by the forces of established commerce and unthinking cultural imperialism.

Ryman, however, goes much further than this. He uses the events to create a conversation between past, present and future, and explore the complex relationship they have in all of us, ultimately suggesting that if in our headlong rush into the future the we lose sight of our past it will leave us as impoverished as as if we dig in our heels and refuse to accept progress at all.

For me, this book reinforced just how good a writer Geoff Ryman is. The sense of place and culture he evokes is superb, quite alien no doubt to most readers and yet rendered utterly real and personal by the well drawn characters and their social interactions. He makes huge themes approachable by exploring them on a personal level, as they affect small, everyday lives. This is also excellent science fiction, although it does not necessarily fit with Ryman's recently stated aim of making a science fiction that was meticulously realistic “hard SF”; there is something archetypal about it, something mythic. In this collision of past, present and future, of East and West, of Have and Have-nots, Ryman has given us a fable for the cyber age. ...more

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Apr 28, 2017 ambyr rated it really liked it

Shelves: acquiredㅡfrom-work, authorㅡmale, book-club, genreㅡscience-fiction, i-am-exactly-the-right-audience, protagonistㅡfemale

One of those books that took me a long time to read because I didn't want it to end. The protagonist is a delight--uneducated but always open to learning, judgmental but also quick to love and forgive, incisive about everyone around (and inside) her, and always and unrepentantly herself.

So often I ignore maps at the beginnings of books, but this one catches the eye; it's not a map of a world or a country or a city, but a single village, with a couple dozen houses (each named) and a handful of st ...more

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Dec 07, 2008 Eric rated it it was amazing

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 takes place ...more

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Nov 13, 2016 Vít rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Příběh z blízké budoucnosti, ze světa takříkajíc "online". Pomocí nové technologie jsou zapojovány do celosvětové sítě přímo lidské mozky, nejsou tak už zapotřebí žádná další zařízení, Ale jako každá nová technologie, i tahle má své mouchy.
V zapadlé středoasijské vesničce místní vesničané pěstují rýži jako jejich předkové a okolní moderní svět je příliš nezajímá. Příchod Airnetu je pro ně něco na úrovni návštěvy mimozemšťanů (nebo místních bohů). A navíc když síť dosáhne až k nim, skončí první t ...more

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Jun 26, 2010 Deborah Biancotti rated it liked it

I'm really impressed with how Ryman can push a premise to its logical conclusion. This is really what science fiction is meant to do; THIS is the literature of ideas!

And this is also the literature that proves you can write an interesting book about an unlikeable character. Chang Wei is superior & vain, & despite that I kept reading. I kept reading largely because the technology was so weird, & the abuse--really, the abuse--of it by frankly everyone with access to it (yes, including ...more

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Jun 16, 2015 Daniel Riveong rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi, central-asia

This was a difficult book to review. The characters, especially the dialogue, are wooden and sometimes unconvincing, while the mechanism of the subplot was utterly ridiculous. I struggled through this at times because of these two factors.

Yet at the end, this was a illuminating sci-fi story that focuses on a broad impact of change. It is story that focuses on the cultural, social, economic, and personal upheavals brought by technological change, and that this technological change is neither goo ...more

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About Geoff Ryman

Geoff Ryman

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Geoffrey Charles Ryman (born 1951) is a writer of science fiction, fantasy and slipstream fiction. He was born in Canada, and has lived most of his life in England.

His science fiction and fantasy works include The Warrior Who Carried Life (1985), the novella The Unconquered Country (1986) (winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the World Fantasy Award), and The Child Garden (1989) (winner ...more

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Quotes from Air

“He might as well have been talking English, for all Mae understood him.” — 4 likes

“Once there was a dictator. He drove millions to various kinds of deaths, by war, in prison, or simply in harsh deserts farming their lives away. He destroyed temples, burned books, and ruined the art of calligraphy. He wrote terrible poetry and forced everyone to learn it, so destroying the literary taste of one quarter of humanity. He remained a warrior even as Chairman. He was at his best as a warrior, because as a warrior, he was fighting for his people, dreaming for them. After that, he only ground them down. But I forgive him for saying one beautiful thing:

'Women hold up half the sky.' -- Chairman Mao Tse Tung” — 2 likes

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