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Ar
Chung Mae é a única ligação entre os seus vizinhos e a cultura de um mundo mais abrangente, que vai para além dos campos de cultivo e das casas simples da sua aldeia. Uma nova tecnologia de comunicação, que promete colocar toda a gente em contacto, em qualquer lugar, sem precisar de linhas eléctricas, computadores ou máquinas, está a invadir o mundo. Esta tecnologia é o Ar. O teste inicial do Ar corre terrivelmente mal e algumas pessoas morrem devido ao choque. Imparável, o Ar chegará com ou sem a aceitação da aldeia de Mae. Ela é a única que sabe como o dominar e como preparar a população para a sua chegada. Mas será que lhe vão dar ouvidos? Ou será tarde demais?
557 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2004
About the author
Geoff Ryman
105 books213 followersGeoffrey 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 of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Campbell Award). Subsequent fiction works include Was (1992), Lust (2001), and Air (2005) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the British Science Fiction Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and on the short list for the Nebula Award).
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 of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Campbell Award). Subsequent fiction works include Was (1992), Lust (2001), and Air (2005) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, the British Science Fiction Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and on the short list for the Nebula Award).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 272 reviews
October 24, 2008
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.
1. It was fucking stupid (more later).
2. It was far too ambitious. See, I really like sci-fi / fantasy that isn't obsessed with its own mechanics, where the author just gently drops you into a new world without over-explaining all its ins and outs and origins &c. But this wasn't that at all; the author was I think just as confused as I remained for four hundred pages about the ins and outs of 'Air' – the super-mega-über-internet thingy that is in everyone's heads all the time, and can connect everything to everything, and somehow also allows for time travel and kind of becoming a ghost and maybe also being present at your own birth and death, and putting other people inside your head and you inside theirs and everything. Oh my god, what?
2a. In addition to the preceding, there were about a trillion tiny subplots that did not serve the story, merely over-complicated things further. The tiny village where the story mostly takes place is kind of in China or maybe Tibet but everyone is mostly Muslim, and there is all this religious weirdness and kind-of-explored identity politics and gender roles and dress codes and such, but none of it is used to make any points; it's just brought up for a while and then abandoned. There was one whole long-running thing about one woman who belongs to this ancient oppressed race, the Eloi, who are grossly misrepresented in the modern world, and so she's on a crusade to bring the truth to the masses (with a kind-of website on the Air thing), but somehow this is illegal and so when she gets found out the whole thing is encryptedly emailed (through Air) to this other tertiary (at best) character and then never discussed again. Gone, poof! Oh hey, what about that talking dog who led our heroine out of prison that one time? Yeah, he never came back or was mentioned again. This book is riddled with dead-end almost-subplots, which at first you try to keep track of, because you (stupidly) assume they will matter later, and then they don't. So by the second half, I kept meeting Mr. Atakoloo and learning about his goat or Young Ms. Boppity-Boo and her armless step-aunt's abusive boyfriend and I just tuned out. And it never mattered!
3. It was horribly written. I am tired of whining about all the shit that is getting put between two covers and published as a "book" these days (and we all wonder why the publishing industry is dying), but holy shit, this book was very, very poorly written. Worst, in fact, than just being consistently of low quality, this book actually had – very few and far between – some nice imagery, or short bursts of believable dialogue, or a backstory anecdote that actually made some kind of sense or built up a character interestingly. But for about thirty pages between every occurrence of semi-decency, there was the worst kinds of purple prose, over-writing, unnecessary asides, and tons and tons and tons of absurd metaphors and similes. All sorts of "crying, she wrung her face out like a dish rag" and "behind his eyes, something shifted and flickered like a burgeoning flame." Hey Geoff Ryman: these things don't make sense. You are a moron.
4. It was rife with typos. Look, I realize that I've become nuttier and nuttier about this since it is my job, but I am not talking here about a misplaced comma or a split infinitive once or twice. I am saying that about one page in every five had a glaring error, like a dropped word or a forgotten line break or a mis-attributed quote or a misspelling. Hey St. Martin's Griffin: fire your current copyeditor and hire me and I will make your books not suck a big dick.
5. Incredibly stupid things happen constantly. Like in the one sex scene in the whole book, girl is on her period and they do it and then each go down on each other. And then girl finds out she is pregnant, but the baby is in her stomach, not her uterus, because she swallowed, natch, both her juices and his. (I'm going to be honest, that happened on maybe page 150, and that was really when I gave up.)
6. I am sick of this list and sick of thinking about this stupid, shitty book. Fuck you, Air. Now I gotta call Joe and tell him that his taste in books is bafflingly terrible.
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.
1. It was fucking stupid (more later).
2. It was far too ambitious. See, I really like sci-fi / fantasy that isn't obsessed with its own mechanics, where the author just gently drops you into a new world without over-explaining all its ins and outs and origins &c. But this wasn't that at all; the author was I think just as confused as I remained for four hundred pages about the ins and outs of 'Air' – the super-mega-über-internet thingy that is in everyone's heads all the time, and can connect everything to everything, and somehow also allows for time travel and kind of becoming a ghost and maybe also being present at your own birth and death, and putting other people inside your head and you inside theirs and everything. Oh my god, what?
2a. In addition to the preceding, there were about a trillion tiny subplots that did not serve the story, merely over-complicated things further. The tiny village where the story mostly takes place is kind of in China or maybe Tibet but everyone is mostly Muslim, and there is all this religious weirdness and kind-of-explored identity politics and gender roles and dress codes and such, but none of it is used to make any points; it's just brought up for a while and then abandoned. There was one whole long-running thing about one woman who belongs to this ancient oppressed race, the Eloi, who are grossly misrepresented in the modern world, and so she's on a crusade to bring the truth to the masses (with a kind-of website on the Air thing), but somehow this is illegal and so when she gets found out the whole thing is encryptedly emailed (through Air) to this other tertiary (at best) character and then never discussed again. Gone, poof! Oh hey, what about that talking dog who led our heroine out of prison that one time? Yeah, he never came back or was mentioned again. This book is riddled with dead-end almost-subplots, which at first you try to keep track of, because you (stupidly) assume they will matter later, and then they don't. So by the second half, I kept meeting Mr. Atakoloo and learning about his goat or Young Ms. Boppity-Boo and her armless step-aunt's abusive boyfriend and I just tuned out. And it never mattered!
3. It was horribly written. I am tired of whining about all the shit that is getting put between two covers and published as a "book" these days (and we all wonder why the publishing industry is dying), but holy shit, this book was very, very poorly written. Worst, in fact, than just being consistently of low quality, this book actually had – very few and far between – some nice imagery, or short bursts of believable dialogue, or a backstory anecdote that actually made some kind of sense or built up a character interestingly. But for about thirty pages between every occurrence of semi-decency, there was the worst kinds of purple prose, over-writing, unnecessary asides, and tons and tons and tons of absurd metaphors and similes. All sorts of "crying, she wrung her face out like a dish rag" and "behind his eyes, something shifted and flickered like a burgeoning flame." Hey Geoff Ryman: these things don't make sense. You are a moron.
4. It was rife with typos. Look, I realize that I've become nuttier and nuttier about this since it is my job, but I am not talking here about a misplaced comma or a split infinitive once or twice. I am saying that about one page in every five had a glaring error, like a dropped word or a forgotten line break or a mis-attributed quote or a misspelling. Hey St. Martin's Griffin: fire your current copyeditor and hire me and I will make your books not suck a big dick.
5. Incredibly stupid things happen constantly. Like in the one sex scene in the whole book, girl is on her period and they do it and then each go down on each other. And then girl finds out she is pregnant, but the baby is in her stomach, not her uterus, because she swallowed, natch, both her juices and his. (I'm going to be honest, that happened on maybe page 150, and that was really when I gave up.)
6. I am sick of this list and sick of thinking about this stupid, shitty book. Fuck you, Air. Now I gotta call Joe and tell him that his taste in books is bafflingly terrible.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 24, 2007
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 from what are stereotypically poor small village problems: loan sharking at exorbitant interest rates, extortion by village strong man, clashing gender roles (the protagonist is an iconoclastic woman who is smarter than most of the men in the village).
The general thrust of the story is pretty simple: small backwards village needs to adjust to modern technology and the global economy in order to survive. In this case, the modern technology is Air, a kind of psychic Internet. Through the twists and turns in this story, at times tragic, at times so good that it feels somewhat like techno/e-commerce wish-fulfillment, Ryman does very well chronicling the lives, problems, and peccadilloes of all the inhabitants of his little village. It does not take long to take sides for some and against others, only to change your mind a few chapters later.
On the mildly irksome side, there was a bizarre and hardly believable sub-plot involving a pregnancy, which seems to be set up as a major plot point, but to me it comes across as befuddling and a little silly. And the last chapter could probably have been condensed or cut entirely (I really loved the penultimate chapter, and would have preferred it end there). But these are minor quibbles.
The general thrust of the story is pretty simple: small backwards village needs to adjust to modern technology and the global economy in order to survive. In this case, the modern technology is Air, a kind of psychic Internet. Through the twists and turns in this story, at times tragic, at times so good that it feels somewhat like techno/e-commerce wish-fulfillment, Ryman does very well chronicling the lives, problems, and peccadilloes of all the inhabitants of his little village. It does not take long to take sides for some and against others, only to change your mind a few chapters later.
On the mildly irksome side, there was a bizarre and hardly believable sub-plot involving a pregnancy, which seems to be set up as a major plot point, but to me it comes across as befuddling and a little silly. And the last chapter could probably have been condensed or cut entirely (I really loved the penultimate chapter, and would have preferred it end there). But these are minor quibbles.
January 22, 2023
This book constantly surprised me. An insanely good store on the interruption and absolute disruption of new technology on indigenous cultures.
Of course, in this, the indigenous culture definitely felt like a sleepy middle-class small town and we are consistently introduced to bigger and more amazing technologies that the rest of the world takes for granted.
The main one being Air. A portal, like the internet would be for old people, into a wider, interconnected world -- but so much more.
The pitfalls and the cultural crappiness and the denials, the turning away, the sticking of heads in sand, all of this is both predictable and rather disgusting, until we even reach the whole Cassandra stage.
Oddly, I didn't really like this and I thought it was rather too slow at first. It was only after we started getting into an epistolary novel did I start loving it. And after that, I was just fascinated. Mental health, dealing with too much information, being hellishly isolated, finding a balance with others... all of this is represented. It's easy to say it's a metaphor for what we already deal with, but the hardcore SF is definitely here. Air, itself, is really fascinating.
I'm glad I'm picking up another Geoff Ryman book. He's great for a lot of seriously original ideas and a deep dive into the consequences.
Of course, in this, the indigenous culture definitely felt like a sleepy middle-class small town and we are consistently introduced to bigger and more amazing technologies that the rest of the world takes for granted.
The main one being Air. A portal, like the internet would be for old people, into a wider, interconnected world -- but so much more.
The pitfalls and the cultural crappiness and the denials, the turning away, the sticking of heads in sand, all of this is both predictable and rather disgusting, until we even reach the whole Cassandra stage.
Oddly, I didn't really like this and I thought it was rather too slow at first. It was only after we started getting into an epistolary novel did I start loving it. And after that, I was just fascinated. Mental health, dealing with too much information, being hellishly isolated, finding a balance with others... all of this is represented. It's easy to say it's a metaphor for what we already deal with, but the hardcore SF is definitely here. Air, itself, is really fascinating.
I'm glad I'm picking up another Geoff Ryman book. He's great for a lot of seriously original ideas and a deep dive into the consequences.
February 26, 2009
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.
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.
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February 23, 2023I can't write a review of this book right now.
The scope, the implications and the lyricism of the writing are too much to be assimilated and understood with just one passage.
I need to read it a second time before attempting to write anything about it!
For now, I just say that Goodreads needs to add at least two more stars to their rating system just for this book.
I'll be back...! (no I'm not using dark sunglasses...)
The scope, the implications and the lyricism of the writing are too much to be assimilated and understood with just one passage.
I need to read it a second time before attempting to write anything about it!
For now, I just say that Goodreads needs to add at least two more stars to their rating system just for this book.
I'll be back...! (no I'm not using dark sunglasses...)
October 28, 2009
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 novel. Simply yet beautifully written, it tackles all the great questions of life gracefully. What is love? Should we cling to the past? Should we fear the future? Can we avoid the future? Is technology something we should embrace or something we should fear?
In a nutshell, 'Air' is a story about a small village in a fictitious Central Asian country that is about to get its first taste of a more ubiquitous, more pervasive version of the internet known as Air.
I'll definitely be reading more Geoff Ryman in the future.
'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 novel. Simply yet beautifully written, it tackles all the great questions of life gracefully. What is love? Should we cling to the past? Should we fear the future? Can we avoid the future? Is technology something we should embrace or something we should fear?
In a nutshell, 'Air' is a story about a small village in a fictitious Central Asian country that is about to get its first taste of a more ubiquitous, more pervasive version of the internet known as Air.
I'll definitely be reading more Geoff Ryman in the future.
July 4, 2007
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 about Air...he felt it leant too heavily upon the idea of a technological marvel that changes the way the world works. Those of us who read scads of sf have encountered this before: the Singularity, the paragon of inventions, the perfect program, whatever--the one piece of tech that revolutionizes the world. In these stories, a macguffin does all the hard work, and all the painful history and prejudice and failings of humanity fall by the wayside. But in truth, I think Air: Or Have Not Have problematizes that idea in exactly the right way. Air is just another piece of tech; it will absolutely change some things, but as Ryman shows, inequalities have an impact on how people use it and can access it, and people themselves remain a deeply important part of the story. This book isn't about Air, the magical new telepathic internet. It's about Mae, and what she feels for and does about her community. I highly recommend this book to anyone, even if they ordinarily can't stand science fiction.
Last year I saw Geoff Ryman speak, and he mentioned his ambivalence about Air...he felt it leant too heavily upon the idea of a technological marvel that changes the way the world works. Those of us who read scads of sf have encountered this before: the Singularity, the paragon of inventions, the perfect program, whatever--the one piece of tech that revolutionizes the world. In these stories, a macguffin does all the hard work, and all the painful history and prejudice and failings of humanity fall by the wayside. But in truth, I think Air: Or Have Not Have problematizes that idea in exactly the right way. Air is just another piece of tech; it will absolutely change some things, but as Ryman shows, inequalities have an impact on how people use it and can access it, and people themselves remain a deeply important part of the story. This book isn't about Air, the magical new telepathic internet. It's about Mae, and what she feels for and does about her community. I highly recommend this book to anyone, even if they ordinarily can't stand science fiction.
April 29, 2008
oh my god oh my god oh my god. I want to say AMAZING in capital letters, but that might look like ordinary fannish squee, and it is not because this is such an important book, such a good, serious, interesting book. I want to make everyone I know read it. omg.
The ending was seriously bizarre**, but apart from that, wow. Wow. I am basically going to go out and buy everything Geoff Ryman has ever written now.
**I should say that I'm basically pretending that the stomach-baby didn't happen. I am helped by the fact that I read this at about 2 am and for a moment thought that I must have just made the stomach-baby up out of crazy sleep deprivation. (Can you actually have a baby the size of your hand? What???) It's like Geoff Ryman just kinda went crazy with the pregnancy subplot and maybe some people who actually knew shit were like "wait, you can't have a baby from your stomach, there's all acid in there and shit, the uterus is there for a reason and the reason is that foetuses are kinda sensitive and need all that amniotic fluid and stuff" but Geoff Ryman was like "no, wait, okay, but it's SYMBOLIC" and the people were like "oh okay then."
Apart from that it was amazing. Perhaps you can think of it as the one flaw Muslim artisans were said deliberately to introduce into their work, because only God is perfect.
The ending was seriously bizarre**, but apart from that, wow. Wow. I am basically going to go out and buy everything Geoff Ryman has ever written now.
**I should say that I'm basically pretending that the stomach-baby didn't happen. I am helped by the fact that I read this at about 2 am and for a moment thought that I must have just made the stomach-baby up out of crazy sleep deprivation. (Can you actually have a baby the size of your hand? What???) It's like Geoff Ryman just kinda went crazy with the pregnancy subplot and maybe some people who actually knew shit were like "wait, you can't have a baby from your stomach, there's all acid in there and shit, the uterus is there for a reason and the reason is that foetuses are kinda sensitive and need all that amniotic fluid and stuff" but Geoff Ryman was like "no, wait, okay, but it's SYMBOLIC" and the people were like "oh okay then."
Apart from that it was amazing. Perhaps you can think of it as the one flaw Muslim artisans were said deliberately to introduce into their work, because only God is perfect.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 10, 2026
This is a standalone SF novel, written in a subgenre of 'mundane SF', which was largely introduced by the author. According to the Wiki:
This is the story of Chung Mae, who lives in the tiny mountain village of Kizuldah in Karzistan, in our times. Karzistan is a fictional ex-Soviet republic bordering China and Mae is from a small ethnos (also fictional) literally called the Eloi (yes, a deliberate nod to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine). Kizuldah is home to a mix of ethnicities — including Han Chinese and Karzistani/Turkic groups.
Mae is married to a not-very-smart, sometimes-drinking man named Joe. She is illiterate but 'street-smart '; Mae spends her time making graduation dresses for local girls and hosting shopping expeditions into the big city for her adult clients. She loves to visit an elderly Mrs. Tung, who guided Mae into fashion (on a village level, of course).
A big change comes to their village, which was chosen as a technologically backward place - Air. "Air" is a global, brain-wired internet, a network that needs no device, no screen, just a willing nervous system. The backwardness of the place is highlighted by the fact that for them it is more similar to TV than to computers or the Internet, about which they have no clue.
This change hits Mae hard in a way that owes less to hard science than to magical realism – her mind intertwines with the consciousness of Mrs. Tung, who died during the introduction of Air. Moreover, soon after, she has an affair with a widower (a very polite and positive older man) and gets pregnant in her stomach — a deliberately fantastical, folk-belief conception that even fans of the book flag as its most divisive moment – and the rest of the story is a solid what-if for the have-nots to get what 'haves' got. There is a famous quote by William Gibson: "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed," and this book's central task is to show how a redistribution of the future will work.
The book is clever, with interesting characters and situations, but I cannot say I enjoyed it – alas, its escapism value is low, even if the very sub-genre of mundane SF is interesting and the author is definitely a talented one. Plus, as a person born in the USSR, I know that there was no such republic and that former republics use tenge, som or manat but never riel as their currency (most likely linked to Cambodian real, for the author has written extensively on Cambodian subjects. However, Cambodia hasn’t even bordered the USSR), and other minor issues about a fictional history of a fictional country, which irk me but I understand are completely ok for a Western reader.
'This movement proposes "mundane science fiction" as its own subgenre of science fiction, typically characterized by its setting on Earth and a believable use of technology and science as it exists at the time the story is written or a plausible extension of existing technology.'This is my first book by this author and I read it as a part of the monthly reading for September 2026 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group. The novel was nominated for the Nebula in 2006, but lost to Camouflage by Joe Haldeman. Overall, the author was nominated for or won several SFF, but his only encounter with the main SFF fandom award, Hugo, was for the novelette "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" in 2007 (competition in novelettes is way less severe than in novels. In that year, 471 ballots were for a novel and only 409 for a novelette). So, he isn't 'big' in the US fandom, but he won four times the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award and twice the jury-based Arthur C. Clarke Award. The novel I'm about to review won both.
This is the story of Chung Mae, who lives in the tiny mountain village of Kizuldah in Karzistan, in our times. Karzistan is a fictional ex-Soviet republic bordering China and Mae is from a small ethnos (also fictional) literally called the Eloi (yes, a deliberate nod to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine). Kizuldah is home to a mix of ethnicities — including Han Chinese and Karzistani/Turkic groups.
Mae is married to a not-very-smart, sometimes-drinking man named Joe. She is illiterate but 'street-smart '; Mae spends her time making graduation dresses for local girls and hosting shopping expeditions into the big city for her adult clients. She loves to visit an elderly Mrs. Tung, who guided Mae into fashion (on a village level, of course).
A big change comes to their village, which was chosen as a technologically backward place - Air. "Air" is a global, brain-wired internet, a network that needs no device, no screen, just a willing nervous system. The backwardness of the place is highlighted by the fact that for them it is more similar to TV than to computers or the Internet, about which they have no clue.
This change hits Mae hard in a way that owes less to hard science than to magical realism – her mind intertwines with the consciousness of Mrs. Tung, who died during the introduction of Air. Moreover, soon after, she has an affair with a widower (a very polite and positive older man) and gets pregnant in her stomach — a deliberately fantastical, folk-belief conception that even fans of the book flag as its most divisive moment – and the rest of the story is a solid what-if for the have-nots to get what 'haves' got. There is a famous quote by William Gibson: "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed," and this book's central task is to show how a redistribution of the future will work.
The book is clever, with interesting characters and situations, but I cannot say I enjoyed it – alas, its escapism value is low, even if the very sub-genre of mundane SF is interesting and the author is definitely a talented one. Plus, as a person born in the USSR, I know that there was no such republic and that former republics use tenge, som or manat but never riel as their currency (most likely linked to Cambodian real, for the author has written extensively on Cambodian subjects. However, Cambodia hasn’t even bordered the USSR), and other minor issues about a fictional history of a fictional country, which irk me but I understand are completely ok for a Western reader.
March 27, 2011
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.
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.
March 18, 2014
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 it is, is speculative fiction which explores some definitely interesting sociological ideas. It has one Good Book aspect, in that it asks a nice compact "what if" and proceeds to elaborate.
What if the internet was free and available to EVERYONE? How would that affect third world culture/society?
If you ignore the bad science, pure fantasy, and supernatural aspects of the implementation of such a thing, this book because a fascinating culture study. The characters are residents of a small, poor village in a third world country. Each character is very real, very human, very flawed, and endearing. Despite being set in a society in which women are second class citizens, and often not even treated like real people, the females are the primary characters, and they pass the Bechdel test very quickly.
So, I liked this book a lot; however I would never recommended it as SciFi, and the pool of friends to which I would recommend it at all is very tiny. The science simply has too many issues. However I would definitely read this author again if the book isn't SciFi or "SciFi".
p.s. I'm not even going to address the ridiculous stomach pregnancy and subsequent mouth birth beyond this. Read other reviews for that if you want, but that falls on the absolute worst side of the bad science in this book, I was more comfortable with the supernatural aspects than that bullshit.
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 it is, is speculative fiction which explores some definitely interesting sociological ideas. It has one Good Book aspect, in that it asks a nice compact "what if" and proceeds to elaborate.
What if the internet was free and available to EVERYONE? How would that affect third world culture/society?
If you ignore the bad science, pure fantasy, and supernatural aspects of the implementation of such a thing, this book because a fascinating culture study. The characters are residents of a small, poor village in a third world country. Each character is very real, very human, very flawed, and endearing. Despite being set in a society in which women are second class citizens, and often not even treated like real people, the females are the primary characters, and they pass the Bechdel test very quickly.
So, I liked this book a lot; however I would never recommended it as SciFi, and the pool of friends to which I would recommend it at all is very tiny. The science simply has too many issues. However I would definitely read this author again if the book isn't SciFi or "SciFi".
p.s. I'm not even going to address the ridiculous stomach pregnancy and subsequent mouth birth beyond this. Read other reviews for that if you want, but that falls on the absolute worst side of the bad science in this book, I was more comfortable with the supernatural aspects than that bullshit.
April 21, 2008
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.
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.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 7, 2011
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 sometimes, too. This book is about her and her village and her tumultuous personal life, and a battle for corporate control of technology, and education, and being the village madwoman. ““Why do people treat the past as if they’ve lost a battle that the present won?” she demanded, fists clenched.” And that, and big powers and tiny people.
It’s not perfect. There’s a plotline that’s just . . . odd. Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it. And I raise my eyebrows at Ryman’s choice of a made up Asian country with a soundalike name – Karzistan. There is something suspicious to me about drawing so many analogies and references to actual Asian countries while avoiding the rigor and exactitude of, you know, actually writing about Kazakhstan and its people. Still, it’s really not fatal for something this tense and prickling and smart.
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 sometimes, too. This book is about her and her village and her tumultuous personal life, and a battle for corporate control of technology, and education, and being the village madwoman. ““Why do people treat the past as if they’ve lost a battle that the present won?” she demanded, fists clenched.” And that, and big powers and tiny people.
It’s not perfect. There’s a plotline that’s just . . . odd. Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it. And I raise my eyebrows at Ryman’s choice of a made up Asian country with a soundalike name – Karzistan. There is something suspicious to me about drawing so many analogies and references to actual Asian countries while avoiding the rigor and exactitude of, you know, actually writing about Kazakhstan and its people. Still, it’s really not fatal for something this tense and prickling and smart.
December 27, 2023
I was disappointed with this story of a village in a fictional country in central Asia coming to terms with the internet and the Instagram economy. It felt trite and some of the action was rather predictable. I guess the characters like Mae were ok, but the overall story just felt too contrived. I wonder if Ryman's other books are written like this one, but based on my experience, I probably won't seek out his other books unless someone gives me a compelling reason to do so.
May 21, 2012
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, figures out how to use and manage AIR, and
decides to prepare her fellow villagers for the final deployment.
After the test her mind is inexplicably still linked into AIR, and can
also see parts of the past and future. In addition, she has retained,
in a corner of her mind, the personality and memories of old Granny
Tung, who died in the test. The story focuses on the development of
Mae's character, as she develops into an entrepreneur and a leader.
Her goal is to prepare her people for the inevitable changes due to
AIR as it floods their minds with information and connectivity, as
well as the future event of a physical flood of water, a spring
run-off that will overrun and change their village. She uses the
connectivity to link the worlds too, marketing her village's hand
embroidered collars to the high tech youth of New York city. A good
book, but we could have done without the baby developing in her
stomach, then being vomited up as a stunted, disabled infant, already
knowing how to use AIR.
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, figures out how to use and manage AIR, and
decides to prepare her fellow villagers for the final deployment.
After the test her mind is inexplicably still linked into AIR, and can
also see parts of the past and future. In addition, she has retained,
in a corner of her mind, the personality and memories of old Granny
Tung, who died in the test. The story focuses on the development of
Mae's character, as she develops into an entrepreneur and a leader.
Her goal is to prepare her people for the inevitable changes due to
AIR as it floods their minds with information and connectivity, as
well as the future event of a physical flood of water, a spring
run-off that will overrun and change their village. She uses the
connectivity to link the worlds too, marketing her village's hand
embroidered collars to the high tech youth of New York city. A good
book, but we could have done without the baby developing in her
stomach, then being vomited up as a stunted, disabled infant, already
knowing how to use AIR.
July 27, 2013
I don't get what all the fuss is about. This book has a few interesting ideas, but it never really explores any of them in depth.
Is it a book about the accidental merging of two personalities? Is it a book about the evolution of the human species? Is it a book about the nature of reality? Is it a book about the impact of technology on our lives? It tries to be all of these (and more!), but fails to really deliver on any of them.
To top it off, the characters are almost uniformly mean-spirited and unlikable. I found it difficult to care about any of them.
Is it a book about the accidental merging of two personalities? Is it a book about the evolution of the human species? Is it a book about the nature of reality? Is it a book about the impact of technology on our lives? It tries to be all of these (and more!), but fails to really deliver on any of them.
To top it off, the characters are almost uniformly mean-spirited and unlikable. I found it difficult to care about any of them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 11, 2020
Confusing and disappointing. Expecting a science fiction novel about a new form of communications technology, what I in fact got was a story of a small town in a fictional Mongolia-like country, a woman who wants to become a fashion designer, gossip and adultery and family drama. There are bizarre elements of what feel more like magical realism than SF, and I felt like the whole thing lacked coherence and focus.
It has powerful, well written moments, but feels like it doesn't really know what it wants to be or say.
It has powerful, well written moments, but feels like it doesn't really know what it wants to be or say.
December 28, 2017
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.
March 31, 2020
My attempt to read all of the Arthur C. Clarke Award winners has introduced me to some really incredible science fiction, and Air, which won in 2006, is by no means the least of these. Appropriately, it’s set in 2019-2020, and concerns the coming of a new technology called Air (“like TV in your head”) to the remote Central Asian village of Kizuldah, where people are barely aware of “the Net”, let alone this potentially devastating new world. Chung Mae, the village’s stubborn “fashion expert”, experiences an early test version of Air that kills her elderly neighbour and implants the old woman’s consciousness in Mae’s mind. Realizing how desperately unready her people are, she determines to make them so. Ryman’s smart not to play the situation for laughs on the whole; the book is funny, sometimes, but it’s not laughing at Mae or at her fellow villagers. It’s also the most effectively political book I’ve read for a long time, seamlessly integrating the odd coexistence of Muslims, Christians, and (fictional) ethnic minority Eloi in the same village with the central government’s formal oppression of those same Eloi, an oppression reflected in the tiny, propaganda-riddled quantity of information about them available online (and which an Eloi woman in the village decides to remedy, to her own hazard). Nor can I think of another book that so clearly demonstrates how universal access to information is democratic only in the most sinuous and slippery way, how the division of “haves” and “have-nots” (the book’s subtitle) will persist unless have-nots are specifically taught how to use new tools, and taught without condescension, in ways that they can grasp. It’s an exciting, gripping, hopeful, bittersweet book, and an exceptionally good one.
May 2, 2018
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
Want to Read
January 4, 2026Geoff Ryman's Air also seems to get a SF Masterworks edition!
February 13, 2012
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.
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.
September 23, 2013
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.
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.
May 27, 2016
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 náboženstiev, strety starého a nového, mužského a ženského sveta - toto všetko sa malo zmeniť.
Mae, ktorej sa prvý test tejto novej technológie dotkol, to všetko vie. Formátovanie ju zmenilo natoľko, že v nej zostala duša (odtlačok) jej susedky, ktorá pri teste zomrela. Vydesená zrazu vidí aj do minulosti a aj nejaké záblesky budúcnosti. Uvedomuje si, že susedov na toto všetko niekto musí pripraviť - a ten niekto by mala byť asi ona, keďže to prežila. A tak sa snaží - učiť, ako majú používať televízor (pc), a oni ju počúvať odmietnu.
Pomalý štart knihy nie je na škodu, nechajte sa ňou viesť, lebo takto sa postupne odkryjú mnohé veci. Dej sa neskôr zrýchli, aby sa vystriedal zas a znovu... Táto naliehavosť až cyklickosť bola krásna, ako aj orientálna poetika, pomalosť a plynutie, ale našlo sa pár momentov, kde sa dej zasekol, no nestalo sa, aby som knihu odložila.
Asi som o nej rozprávala nadšene mnohým. :) No je možné, že si ju neobľúbite, lebo to nie je čistokrvné SF, dokonca ani sociologický román. Je to taký mix a berie si to dobré z viacerých žánrov.
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 náboženstiev, strety starého a nového, mužského a ženského sveta - toto všetko sa malo zmeniť.
Mae, ktorej sa prvý test tejto novej technológie dotkol, to všetko vie. Formátovanie ju zmenilo natoľko, že v nej zostala duša (odtlačok) jej susedky, ktorá pri teste zomrela. Vydesená zrazu vidí aj do minulosti a aj nejaké záblesky budúcnosti. Uvedomuje si, že susedov na toto všetko niekto musí pripraviť - a ten niekto by mala byť asi ona, keďže to prežila. A tak sa snaží - učiť, ako majú používať televízor (pc), a oni ju počúvať odmietnu.
Pomalý štart knihy nie je na škodu, nechajte sa ňou viesť, lebo takto sa postupne odkryjú mnohé veci. Dej sa neskôr zrýchli, aby sa vystriedal zas a znovu... Táto naliehavosť až cyklickosť bola krásna, ako aj orientálna poetika, pomalosť a plynutie, ale našlo sa pár momentov, kde sa dej zasekol, no nestalo sa, aby som knihu odložila.
Asi som o nej rozprávala nadšene mnohým. :) No je možné, že si ju neobľúbite, lebo to nie je čistokrvné SF, dokonca ani sociologický román. Je to taký mix a berie si to dobré z viacerých žánrov.
April 29, 2012
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 much so that it wasn't exciting or gripping, but quite the opposite. And despite death threats and animosity from them all, she still wanted to stay and help them for no discernible reason - Even though she could have just moved away and lived quite happily and contentedly somewhere else.
Also, some parts of this 'sci-fi' novel just seemed a bit too preposterous... Mainly storylines including a bizarre pregnancy and becoming possessed by an angry spirit due to the internet(!?). These factors really threw me out of the story.
It did have its good points. The small-village-lifestyle was well portrayed and felt like it had a realistic history, despite being set in a ficticious Asian country. And the main character did have her good points.
Some part of me did want to read on and find out what happens... But I can more than easily live without ever knowing.
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 much so that it wasn't exciting or gripping, but quite the opposite. And despite death threats and animosity from them all, she still wanted to stay and help them for no discernible reason - Even though she could have just moved away and lived quite happily and contentedly somewhere else.
Also, some parts of this 'sci-fi' novel just seemed a bit too preposterous... Mainly storylines including a bizarre pregnancy and becoming possessed by an angry spirit due to the internet(!?). These factors really threw me out of the story.
It did have its good points. The small-village-lifestyle was well portrayed and felt like it had a realistic history, despite being set in a ficticious Asian country. And the main character did have her good points.
Some part of me did want to read on and find out what happens... But I can more than easily live without ever knowing.
July 8, 2013
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.
Takes a little while to get started but the characters range from loveable, to quirky, to strange etc.
July 5, 2007
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...
October 1, 2016
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.
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.
September 19, 2025
I don’t think Air this book is a terrible Sci Fi book because I have read some far worse Sci Fi books this year, but this doesn’t show its full potential of being a good Sci Fi books. Before I read it, I expected it would be one of the Weirdest Sci Fi books which I have read. However, this didn’t reach my expectation of being the weirdest Sci Fi books. Air as a tech which is able to connect to the future world and the communications are inside users’s head; somehow the consciousness from the past could be loaded in other users’s mind, controlling the Air users to a certain degree. The concepts are Interesting but not be fully developed. It seem like the ideas just had a short introduction than talk another things instead. Those ideas aren’t fully be integrated in the story despite of being an orientation of being settings not the use for the story.
Somehow in the story, the tech, Air is convenient to set up the plot twist but doesn’t have the positive impact on the story for me. It is too convenient to use Air for the protagonist Mae to solve or develop the plots. The explanation of the Tech is not convincing to me.
Some other readers have the issues about this book and I think I also saw the flaws which they have mentioned. Air is not an excellent Sci Fi book but still has it own merits. And thus I give Air 5.25 out of 10. It could be short in the length and the execution could have done better.
Somehow in the story, the tech, Air is convenient to set up the plot twist but doesn’t have the positive impact on the story for me. It is too convenient to use Air for the protagonist Mae to solve or develop the plots. The explanation of the Tech is not convincing to me.
Some other readers have the issues about this book and I think I also saw the flaws which they have mentioned. Air is not an excellent Sci Fi book but still has it own merits. And thus I give Air 5.25 out of 10. It could be short in the length and the execution could have done better.
June 19, 2019
This! This is the type of book I've been looking for. So many books focus on movers and shakers, princesses and kings, and I wonder, what about the little guy? How do people live their everyday lives in this world where the quote-unquote important people create instability and chaos?
Someone somewhere has discovered a way to put the internet into our heads and the world governments have decided to roll it out to everyone everywhere. In a rural town in the fictional Asian country of Karzistan, no one even owns a TV. A test of Air is sent out, surprising people into panic, causing heart attacks, and messing with at least one person's head.
Chung Mae is a self-employed business woman trying to keep her household afloat against the forces of her husband's drinking and bad decision making. She sees the potential for how much Air will change the way of life for herself and her village. She tries to be proactive, but struggles against a husband who is angry that she's the breadwinner, a conservative community who don't want to acknowledge change, and a government that doesn't care about the little people.
I didn't like all of the places the writer went. Like, it was weird when, halfway through, Mae went to the city and discovered she had superpowers, and then it was weirder when she went back to her village and never used them. What was the point of that?
But I loved the idea of this. And I need to find more books like it.
Someone somewhere has discovered a way to put the internet into our heads and the world governments have decided to roll it out to everyone everywhere. In a rural town in the fictional Asian country of Karzistan, no one even owns a TV. A test of Air is sent out, surprising people into panic, causing heart attacks, and messing with at least one person's head.
Chung Mae is a self-employed business woman trying to keep her household afloat against the forces of her husband's drinking and bad decision making. She sees the potential for how much Air will change the way of life for herself and her village. She tries to be proactive, but struggles against a husband who is angry that she's the breadwinner, a conservative community who don't want to acknowledge change, and a government that doesn't care about the little people.
I didn't like all of the places the writer went. Like, it was weird when, halfway through, Mae went to the city and discovered she had superpowers, and then it was weirder when she went back to her village and never used them. What was the point of that?
But I loved the idea of this. And I need to find more books like it.
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