Air: Or, Have Not Have

by Geoff Ryman

Overview

Chung Mae is the only connection her small farming village has to culture of a wider world beyond the fields and simple houses of her village. A new communications technology is sweeping the world and promises to connect everyone, everywhere without power lines, computers, or machines. This technology is Air. An initial testing of Air goes disastrously wrong and people are killed from the shock. Not to be stopped Air is arriving with or without the blessing of Mae's village. Mae is the only one who knows how to harness Air and ready her people for it's arrival, but will they listen before it's too late?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312261214
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

Geoff Ryman is the author of 253, Was, The Child Garden, and The Unconquered Country. He has won the World Fantasy Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and The British Science Fiction Association Award. He lives in London, England.

Editorial Reviews

Air is wonderful...Ryman is a true, graceful writer and this is a novel you move into and inhabit for as long as you can make it last.” —Kit Reed - author of Seven for the Apocalypse & @expectations

“Reading the first sentence of Geoff Ryman's brilliant new novel is like passing through a Tipping Point. The instant he touches you with his story, you're caught, and the world changes as suddenly as Paul Revere changed America: because it brings the news. Air is a message from the future beyond broadband. More than a message, it's a tip. Listen to Geoff Ryman and you're already on the inside track.” —John Clute, author of The Book of Endtimes

“Say that we are all already living in Air, and need with all our heart to know better what it means and how it works. That would be one way of describing the continuous pleasure of reading this great novel—the thrill of recognition. It is like a magic mirror—we are in Chung Mae and she is in us, and her world is utterly alive. What more can fiction do.” —Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy & The Years of Rice and Salt

From the Publisher

Like the Internet, only more so. It's 2020 in Karzistan, a chaotic and badly run Central Asian country where the people live as they have for centuries-poor and struggling on harsh, mountainous land-while the government seems compelled to bring them technologically into the present. An unsuspecting linchpin in this effort is middle-aged Chung Mae, who makes a rough living as an in-residence fashion expert for her remote village. Like the rest of the world, Karzistan is set to launch into Air, the next step in global networking. Air doesn't even require a computer, but will reside in every person's head, allowing everyone to link into the network. But the first test of Air is catastrophic, killing a few and leaving a strange effect on Mae, who is left with memories of a dead woman in her head, a woman who led a much more vivacious life than Mae ever has. The government declares that Air will be tested again in a year, leading Mae to prepare her village by educating them on the Net as much as she can. Meantime, she also teaches herself-the woman's voice in her head disapproving and angry-and finds that she's able to expand her homespun business. But her new independence runs afoul of her neighbors, and she's stuck negotiating between suspicious government officials and distrustful, conservative villagers. Fantasist Ryman (253, 1998, etc.) has an uncanny knack for imagining the clumsy overreaching of eager technocrats, and his description of the mental effects of Air are astounding: Imagine AOL imprinted on your cerebellum. But while Mae is an impressive heroine, and the text is full of sharp commentary and vivid characters, the story itself fails to engage fully and bogs down for longstretches. Not always compelling as fiction, then, but containing many a worthy insight about how the world will be dragged further into the Information Age, like it or not.

Kirkus Reviews