Air_(novel)

<i>Air</i> (novel)

Air (novel)

2005 novel by Geoff Ryman

Air, also known as Air: Or, Have Not Have, is a 2005 novel by Geoff Ryman. It won the British Science Fiction Association Award,[1] the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award,[2] and was on the short list for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2004,[3] the Nebula Award in 2005,[1] and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2006.[2]

Quick Facts Author, Country ...

Ryman initially wrote a short story for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction entitled "Have Not Have", which was included in the April 2001 edition[4] (later reprinted in the June 2014 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine[5]). This was expanded into a novel initially titled Air: Or, Have Not Have, and renamed to just Air in all editions since the first.

Plot introduction

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 (loosely based on the country of Kazakhstan), 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. Afterwards, Mae struggles to prepare her people for what is to come while learning all about the world outside her home.

Reception

F&SF reviewer Robert. K. J. Killheffer praised Ryman's "humane insight and sympathy" and "incisive meditations on the process of social and cultural change," concluding that the novel is "not merely powerful, thought-provoking, and profoundly moving, but indispensable."[6]

Trivia

  • A country called Karzistan also appears in the video game Beyond: Two Souls, where it's an East Asian country having a similar condenser, a portal to the Infraworld (the ghost world), like the United States. The protagonist Jodie Holmes has to destroy the condenser during a CIA mission.

Release details

  • 2004, UK, St. Martin's Griffin (ISBN 0-312-26121-7), Pub date ? October 2004, paperback (First edition)
  • 2005, UK, Gollancz (ISBN 0-575-07697-6), Pub date 21 July 2005, hardback
  • 2005, UK, Gollancz (ISBN 0-575-07811-1), Pub date 14 September 2006, paperback

Notes

  1. [1]
    "2005 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Archived from the original on 6 October 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-17.
  2. [2]
    "2006 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Archived from the original on 6 October 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-17.
  3. [3]
    "2004 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Archived from the original on 6 October 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-17.
  4. [4]
    "book review at scifi.com". Archived from the original on 2009-03-25. Retrieved 2006-10-16.
  5. [5]
    "Have Not Have". Clarkesworld Magazine #93, June 2014.
  6. [6]
    "Books", F&SF, April 2005, pp.38-40

References

  • "AIR (Book)." Kirkus Reviews 71.20 (15 Oct. 2003): 1248.
  • Cannon, Peter, and Jeff Zaleski.. "AIR (Book)." Publishers Weekly 250.45 (10 Nov. 2003): 47-47.
  • Johnson, Roberta. "Air (Book)." Booklist 100.7 (Dec. 2003): 655-655.
  • Have Not Have, the first chapter as an excerpt at Infinity Plus.
  • Air at Worlds Without End
  • Review of Air by Geneva Melzack and Ian Emsley for Strange Horizons.
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