- Hardcover
- Publisher: San Val (Oct 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1417706783
- ISBN-13: 978-1417706785
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21 reviews
36 of 39 people found the following review helpful
A Perfect Novel
27 April 2005
Format:Paperback
This was one of my favorite books of the year. It's outstanding science fiction, but I'm going to give it to friends who don't even think that they like science fiction. They'll like this -- like Snow Crash or Cloud Atlas or Wicked, this is book which should delight readers of all stripes. I couldn't put this book down, and when I had to, I longed to get back to it.
Air has the texture, richness, and fantastical complications (ghosts, visions, layering of mythology and folklore and technology and history) of other slipstream Ryman novels. It's a remarkable and magical act of transformation on Ryman`s part, and it's an experience that transforms his reader as well. I fell in love with his characters, and am still carrying them around in my head. The ending is literally transcendent. Air is not only profound, it`s also marvelously written, deeply joyful, and -- even more rare -- optimistic.
Air has the texture, richness, and fantastical complications (ghosts, visions, layering of mythology and folklore and technology and history) of other slipstream Ryman novels. It's a remarkable and magical act of transformation on Ryman`s part, and it's an experience that transforms his reader as well. I fell in love with his characters, and am still carrying them around in my head. The ending is literally transcendent. Air is not only profound, it`s also marvelously written, deeply joyful, and -- even more rare -- optimistic.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
My nominee for the best SF book of the last 15 years.
26 Oct 2004
Format:Paperback
This has been an explosive and culminating year for cyberpunk, a year in which that genre's trademark techniques of alientation, info-density and kitchen-sink heterogeneity have been applied with climactic success to three very different projects: Rudy Rucker's far-future young adult space opera Frek and the Elixir, Neal Stephenson's stupendous magnum opus The Baroque Trilogy, and now, Geoff Ryman's relatively short and seemingly innocuous AIR, about a remote mountain village in Central Asia, and the efforts of its "fashion expert," a married, middle-aged woman named Chung Mae, to come to grips with the latest version of the Internet.
Don't be fooled. Chung Mae's adventures, while limited to her village and the nearby provincial capitol, are the most mind-blowing emotional, intellectual, terror and sense-of-wonder filled thrill ride since Dan Simmons's Hyperion. And in the same way that Neal Stephenson's 3000 page Baroque Trilogy deals with the previous global social, political, religious, scientific, and economic revolution that gave us our modern world, AIR is a rigorous, visceral, intensely moving and completely convincing portrayal of the next one--all from the point of view of an illiterate, "developing world" wife and mother, who happens to be the most real, engaging and three-dimensional character I've ever encountered in any science fiction book.
Get to know her, care for her, and, yes, worry about her, and by page 200, you'll witness a series of revelations--personal, social, political, biological, and even cosmological--so explosive, you'll think the book cannot possibly top itself--but you'll be only half-way through. There are several plateaus yet to go, on the way to a climax that had me in tears (literally) and at the same time filled me with hope.
This is the year that cyberpunk goes from apocalyptic to revolutionary.
The revolution won't be televised. But it will be AIRed.
Don't be fooled. Chung Mae's adventures, while limited to her village and the nearby provincial capitol, are the most mind-blowing emotional, intellectual, terror and sense-of-wonder filled thrill ride since Dan Simmons's Hyperion. And in the same way that Neal Stephenson's 3000 page Baroque Trilogy deals with the previous global social, political, religious, scientific, and economic revolution that gave us our modern world, AIR is a rigorous, visceral, intensely moving and completely convincing portrayal of the next one--all from the point of view of an illiterate, "developing world" wife and mother, who happens to be the most real, engaging and three-dimensional character I've ever encountered in any science fiction book.
Get to know her, care for her, and, yes, worry about her, and by page 200, you'll witness a series of revelations--personal, social, political, biological, and even cosmological--so explosive, you'll think the book cannot possibly top itself--but you'll be only half-way through. There are several plateaus yet to go, on the way to a climax that had me in tears (literally) and at the same time filled me with hope.
This is the year that cyberpunk goes from apocalyptic to revolutionary.
The revolution won't be televised. But it will be AIRed.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
utterly visionary and brilliant
3 Feb 2005
Format:Paperback
I'm not going to do Air justice, but just buy and it and read it anyway. Now.
This is an amazing novel of ideas about the future of the internet as well as the future of the third world. The characters are diverse, strange, funny, very likeable, and amazingly real. I have no idea how Ryman can write completely convincingly ( and with his usual high degree of eloquence) from the perspective of a middle-aged uneducated ethnic Chinese woman in a fictional far-East country in the near future (whew), but, well, you'll see. Moving, optimistic (which is such a rarity in science fiction these days!), and resonant, Air really may be Ryman's best. Not to be missed!
This is an amazing novel of ideas about the future of the internet as well as the future of the third world. The characters are diverse, strange, funny, very likeable, and amazingly real. I have no idea how Ryman can write completely convincingly ( and with his usual high degree of eloquence) from the perspective of a middle-aged uneducated ethnic Chinese woman in a fictional far-East country in the near future (whew), but, well, you'll see. Moving, optimistic (which is such a rarity in science fiction these days!), and resonant, Air really may be Ryman's best. Not to be missed!
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