Air - by Geoff Ryman (Paperback)

About the Book

Chung Mae is the fashion expert of the farming village of Kizuldah, Karzistan. The town gets Air, a new communication technology that will connect everyone without wires or computers. But the initial test of Air is a disaster; people are killed by the shock, and Mae ends up imprinted with the memories of a dying old woman.

Book Synopsis

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?

From the Back Cover

"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

Review Quotes

"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

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