Product Description

This remarkable novel is about the effects of a new communications technology, Air, that works without power lines or machines. As pervasive technology ensures the rapid spread of pop culture and information access, few corners of the planet remain untouched. One of those few is Kizuldah, Karzistan, a tiny rice-farming village, predominantly Chinese Buddhist but with a strong Muslim presence, among whom sharply intelligent though illiterate Mae Chung, a self-styled fashion expert guiding the village women in dress, make-up and hairstyling, is an informal leader. When the UN decides to test the radical new technology Air, Mae is boiling laundry and chatting with elderly Mrs Tung. The massive surge of Air energy swamps them, and when the test is finished, Mrs Tung is dead, and Mae has absorbed her 90 years of memories. Rocked by the unexpected deaths and disorientation, the UN delays fully implementing Air, but Mae sees at once that her way of life is ending. Half-mad, struggling with information overload, the resentment of much of the village, and a complex family situation, she works fiercely to learn what she needs to ride the tiger of change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35050 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
"One of recent science fiction's acknowledged masterworks. Enthralling." -- Matt Coward Morning Star

Review
"One of recent science fiction's acknowledged masterworks. Enthralling." (Matt Coward Morning Star )

Jonathan Wright, SFX
"Ryman's novel is beautifully tragi-comic and filled with memorable characters. Rarer, it's a science fiction book that looks outside of Europe, North America and the cooler parts of Asia to remind us that the future will be lived by all humanity."

Customer Reviews

Great book
I would higly recommend this book to everyone, I have been searching for a while for a good new author (A good new book to be honest) and I was quite suprised it was this book that won me over and not one of the others that I bough. Well written,great characters great story.

Almost coherent
This is a great novel about the changes wrought in our world by the new communications technology. Unlike most such novels, rather than fixating on the technology itself, Ryman looks at what the coming information revolution will mean to ordinary people living ordinary lives. Unlike any other such story I have read, his characters are not teenagers living in Western affluence, but villagers in a fictional Central Asian country, at the intersection of the Turkic and Chinese cultural spheres, in other words about as far from the West as you can culturally get in today's world. I thought it was fascinating and compassionate.

However. Ryman is a proponent of the "mundane science fiction" school and oddly enough the two most problematic elements for me in the book for me were the two most fantastic ones. The physical flood threatening to overwhelm the village threatened to be a rather overstated echo of the metaphorical deluge of the new technology, but I think Ryman just about got away with it in the end. The heroine's bizarre pregnancy, however, just did not work for me.

Beautiful, intelligent, gripping
If you're reading this, you already know about the power of the internet. Cast your mind back to before you had it. How did you sort out arguments about which film that actor on TV was in? Where did you get your books from? How did you know how much money was in your bank account? Where did you book your holidays? How on earth did you kill time at work?!?

Now imagine the next stage of the Internet: skipping the computer out altogether. Making the entire wealth of the internet accesible to your brain, for free, all the time.

This is exactly what happens to the last village in the world to go online, Kizuldah, a tiny hamlet in the nation of Karzistan. Imagine a world without telephones and running water suddenly being exposed to such a wealth of information, and you are in the world of Air.

The protagonist, Mae, is an illiterate peasant with lofty aspirations. She sells her services in the village as a "fashion expert", eking a living by making dresses and accompanying the wealthier women into town to get their nails done. Following the arrival of an internet-enabled TV in the village she rapidly figures out that with easy access to information, her services will become surplus to requirements, and so she begins an entrepenurial quest to stay ahead of everyone else. As she progresses in her understanding of the web, she also realises that it will effectively destroy the way of life in which her village has always lived. Then again, she is realistic enough to know that there never was a "golden time", that life was always hard and people always adapted.

This is a great book. The protagonist is astutely observed, the village a well-developed setting, and the sci-fi elements eminently plausible. This is one of those novels I burned through in a couple of days, have put away in my cupboard, and will probably come back to next year just to visit Mae and the others.

It's a book that falls outside staid and tired genres we are all so used to. Whatever kind of book you're looking for, this is the one. See you in Kizuldah.