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| ISBN-10 | 0312261217 |
| ISBN-13 | 9780312261214 |
| Authors | Geoff Ryman |
| Publisher | St. Martin's Griffin |
| Publication Date | 2004-10-01 |
| Pages | 400 |
| Dewey Decimal | 823.914 |
| Rating | 4.50 |
| Categories | |
Description
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?
Yep, it is that good.
I second the comments of all the others who rated this one five stars. I've bought a couple extra copies to give as gifts to friends who don't think they like science fiction.Character driven Sci-Fi in a near future. Well worth the read.
Mae is the "Fashion Expert" of a remote village in Central Asia. For her, and the village, life as they know it will be forever changed after a disastrous test of a new form of "internet" called Air, and this is the story of how they all learn to cope with the coming new world.If you like your Sci-Fi full of action and battles then this book will not appeal to you. Instead you are given a cast of characters who you gradually come to care about. The book starts a little slow till the test of Air occurs and then it settles into itself and easily keeps your attention till the end.
I was glad I read this novel. Its one that'd I'd heard from other people was good - and I was happy to find that the grapevine was right in this case. This is different from most other Sci-Fi novels I've read. It's about people - and in this case the have-nots of society and how a radical change of technology affects their lives. Deprived and uneducated does not necessarily mean stupid and its something that the developers of technology ignore at their peril as this novel clearly illustrates.
Beautiful, Elegant, Enigmatic
This is a beautiful, elegant and enigmatic story. Its heroine is Chong Mae, a self-styled fashion consultant in what may be the remotest village in Kyrgyzstan in the year 2020. The book is concerned with what happens to Mae and the other people in her village when an attempt is made to test a new form of communications system, Air, which will link all of the people in the world in a kind of mental internet.Although Air is the speculative fiction device that seems to drive the novel, the book is really about sociological phenomena including social organization, the place of the individual in society, the acceptance and rejection of technological change, rural versus urban society, the elements in society that are first to capitalize on technological change, and the role of early adapters. That broad range sounds quite daunting. But when told from the perspective of Mae, it is also about more basic human elements like family, love, friendship and responsibility.
By incorporating forces unleashed by the test of Air, we are also able to examine the relationship of the past to the present and the present to the future.
With all these elements one might expect Air to be a gigantic sprawling novel, but in fact it operates on an intimate scale, following Mae around while she performs her daily activities, aimed at furthering her own life as well as preparing her village for inevitable technological change. Some of the elements are exceedingly simple and commonplace, yet reflect larger social forces. For example, Mae is attuned to the traditional activities of her village, and, as her vision of the world becomes expanded, can see how there might be a market for the decorative collars handmade by the women in her village. She ends up in internet contact with a fashionista in New York, who helps to make the collars a cutting-edge fashion and political statement. At the same time, Mae develops a relationship with her New York contact that will eventually allow one of her neighbors to preserve her oppositional beliefs to the national government. And yet, this political scale develops in an organic way so naturally from village life that one scarcely notices the transition to national politics.
Two elements make the book enigmatic. The first is the appearance of unexpected phenomena that we might find easier to accept in a more technologically developed world at a later date. The second is the author's reason for introducing these phenomena. One expects that they have some purpose in the author's scheme, especially since the author explores a society substantially different from the reader's, to illuminate our understanding. And yet the author is so skillful in his writing that even though we may not immediately understand his purpose, we accept the phenomena. Finally, even the secondary title "Have Not Have" remains an enigma.
Don't read this book if you are looking for high adventure amidst titanic events. But if you are looking for an examination of the life of a dynamic individual in a small society, you are sure to enjoy this book.
Didnt get it
This book started out entertaining but then it really dragged on.Maybe I didnt understand something, but I felt the second half of the book was really a waste of my time. I had a really hard time finishing it.