"No one can make you feel inferior without you agreeing with them first."

"After tomorrow, everything changes. They will give us TV in our heads, all the knowledge we want."

Mae found that she was angry, and her voice seemed to come from her belly, an octave lower.

"I'm sure that it is a good thing. I am sure the people who do this think they do a good thing. They worry about us, like we were children." Her eyes were like two hearts, pumping furiously. "We don't have time for TV or computers. We face sun, rain, wind, sickness, and each other. It is good that they want to help us." She wanted to shake her certificate; she wished it was one of them, who had upended everything. "But how dare they? How dare they call us have-nots?"

Air (2005), Canadian author Geoff Ryman's wonderful story of near-future globalization and village life in Central Asia, has won a cluster of awards since its release: the Arthur C Clarke, the Tiptree, the Sunburst (all juried) and the BSFA (popular vote). Its success is well deserved. Air is a giddily exuberant, yet perfectly balanced, joy of a novel - thoughtful and beautifully constructed, filled with vibrant characters wrapped up in warmly affectionate prose.

The novel is largely set in Kizuldah, a small village in an imaginary Central Asian republic named Karzistan. Kizuldah, we are told at the very beginning, is "the last village in the world to go online", a hillside subsistence-farming community whose primary contact with the outside world requires a four-hour drive (for those few residents who own vehicles) along a pitted road to the provincial capital, Yeshibozkent. The village's first TV (and thus internet access) is installed only during the first chapter. All of this renders it isolated and ignorant, in the eyes of many both inside and outside; protected and unspoiled, in the eyes of others.

Neither, of course, is the whole story. Kizuldah is poor, certainly, and it is vulnerable to harvest failures. But it is far from isolated or untouched; it lies in a region, after all, that has been a crossroads of cultures, of continent-spanning empires and proto-globalizing trade networks, for centuries. This is reflected in the village's architecture and its ethnic (Chinese, Karz, and the marginalised minority Eloi) and religious make-up (Buddhist, Muslim, animist, a few Christians). The villagers' own memories, meanwhile - of guerillas, Maoists, and rebels, all fighting over the territory at different times - attest to a far from tranquil existence.

Nonetheless, with the development of a new communications technology known as "Air" - a sort of Web 5.0 in which all the resources of the internet can be accessed by the mind directly, without the need for computers or phone lines - Kizuldah has little choice but to engage with the world. Because Air is to be implemented, simultaneously, worldwide. The first that the people of Kizuldah hear of this is from an announcement, via the public address system in Yeshibozkent, that Air will be tested the next day. It is purely coincidence and luck that a handful of villagers - one of them our protagonist, a splendidly indomitable middle-aged woman named Chung Mae - happen to be in Yeshibozkent at the right time, or else Kizuldah would have gone entirely unwarned. They know nothing of the science or politics behind Air (and, neither, therefore, do we); all they know is that it is a gift they have no ability to refuse, an imposition outside their control, framed in paternalistic terms:

Up came the local Talent, still baring her perfect teeth. She piped in a high, enthusiastic voice that was meant to appeal to men and Bright Young Things:

"Hello. Welcome to the Airnet Information Service. For too long the world has been divided into information haves and have-nots." She held up one hand towards the heavens of information and the other out towards the citizens of the Green Valley, inviting them to consider themselves as have-nots.

It is this announcement that sparks Mae's affronted outburst, quoted at the start of the post, and taken together the two speeches invoke themes that recur throughout the novel: information and its communication; the opportunities brought by new technology, and the fresh hierarchies it creates; self-determination within an increasingly inter-connected world, one in which the deck is stacked against many peoples long before they even know there is a game to play; power and powerlessness, and what it means to 'have', or not have.

Above all, Ryman's interest is deeply humanistic: how technology - and, more broadly, the passage of time and attendant changes - affects individuals and societies, and how people attempt to mediate, resist, or embrace such effects. The people of Kizuldah respond to the internet and to the coming of Air in all these ways, and more, and for a variety of different reasons. Mae's friend Kwan, one of the long-persecuted Eloi, sees the internet's potential for making the lost voice of her people heard once more - as opposed to the government's tendentious presentation of them as either historical curios or emblems of (forcible) 'modernisation', stripped of their customs. (This brings trouble on Kizuldah, of course). The village schoolteacher, Shen, meanwhile, is suspicious and hostile; he feels his authority and role threatened. Yet he distrusts not the technology itself, as such, but rather its perception as a panacea, as something that will unambiguously improve life - something that will be relied upon, a crutch. He rebukes Mae when she begins to teach the children how to use the internet:

"They do not know their multiplication tables! And you are telling them, everything will be easy, just wish into the machine. You don't have to work. You don't have to learn." Teacher Shen glared at her. "You will make slaves of them."

He underestimates Mae, here, but the decline in Shen's position - and the hardening of his attitude - over the course of the novel are undeniable. Mae herself - proud, determined, endlessly curious, and entrepreneurial (to the extent that a woman can manage her own affairs in Kizuldah, which is to say only by butting heads and getting a reputation for being 'difficult', and by sticking to harmless spheres of activity, like providing 'fashion' for the village women) - is the first to see what Air might mean for Kizuldah. After the disastrous first test of Air, which plays out like a collective hallucination crossed with mental breakdown (causing two deaths in the village and terrifying all concerned), Mae comes to believe that Kizuldah must not just ride out but also confront this new challenge from the outside world, if it is to survive.

Kwan rubbed her shoulders. "The world out there has grown bigger. There are two worlds. There is the one you can see, and another world people have made up, and it is bigger than the real one. They call it 'Info'."

And Mae felt lust.

Lust to be part of that world, lust to know how it worked, lust to know how the television worked, and how the Net and how the Air would give all that wings. With a lust that bordered on despair, she wanted to be first, she wanted to know all, she wanted to be mistress of all its secrets.

The people of Kizuldah must learn how to use "Info" in order to shape Air to their own needs and wants - before Air shapes them. They have a year until Air is put in place permanently. So Mae embarks on a one-woman mission to convince Kizuldah that Air cannot be ignored... any more than she can. "Lust" is a very deliberate choice of word in the above passage; Mae's motives are a complex mixture of joyful curiosity, naked acquisitiveness, and altruistic fear for her village. As a woman, it is particularly compelling for her. Mae has lived a life of constraint, of operating within the boundaries set for her by her family and by tradition - boundaries that require little of women in the way of brains or ambition, only humility and deference. Of her mother, who struggled to cope after being widowed when her children were young, Mae notes:

"It was very difficult for her; she relied on Papa for everything. In those days, it was possible to believe that if you were a woman you would never have to grow up. You could just go on doing what you were told. And suddenly... poof... no one there to tell you."

She is thus dizzied by the freedom and opportunity Air seems to present her with ("What she felt was akin to panic. What she felt was akin to flying."). Nor does she leave other women out of the equation when she begins to discuss Air with the villagers - an unpopular move, not least with Joe, her dismissive wastrel of a husband:

"We will need to talk to wives separately."

"Why do you need to do that?" said Joe, belligerently.

"Because wives do not talk around their husbands."

"Oh. And you want to encourage them. Tuh."

As the story goes on, Mae's fortunes rise and fall; at her lowest ebb, she becomes a kind of Cassandra, marginalised and almost friendless, crying out warnings that go unheeded. She faces rivals, enemies and obstacles aplenty, in the village and (later) elsewhere. I have already mentioned Shen, whose hostility eventually leads him to disgrace Mae by revealing a scandalous secret she holds. Others have less principled reasons, and use different tactics. Her husband Joe, and her birth family, all prove obstructive or even downright harmful at various times, forcing Mae from her home and attempting to steal what she has earned. Meanwhile, two of the more prominent, wealthy village men - belatedly realising that Mae is onto something - vie to control Kizuldah's access to information, using their internet connections to bolster patronage networks and build parties of supporters.

Another is Tunch, a shadowy government (or not) scientist seeking to understand and exploit the strange accident that befalls Mae during the Air test: her neighbour's mother, Old Mrs Tung, dies during the test, but somehow manages to live on in Mae's head. Mrs Tung doesn't know she is dead, but her voice and her memories invade Mae's mind with increasing regularity, until - bewildered but frantically determined - Mrs Tung begins fighting Mae for control.

Partly, too, Mae's difficulties are down to her transgressive, 'unfeminine' behaviour, of which the strangeness caused by Mrs Tung (and the attendant odd outbursts she provokes) is only one aspect. Mae's clear-sighted, take-no-prisoners abrasiveness is amusing and endearing to the reader. But it attracts disapprobation in traditional Kizuldah and causes severe friction with her family. (Likewise the fun but ill-advised affair she has with her neighbour, which results in a problematic - and odd, for reasons I won't go into - illicit pregnancy). But Mae is nothing if not resilient, time and again living up to her statement - "No one can make you feel inferior without you agreeing with them first" - that I've used for the title of this post.

Mae also, like many characters in the novel (with differing degrees of success), has to learn to compromise, to make amends, and to change. As her brother-in-law Siao puts it, while pointing out to Mae that she will have to play nice with her brother Ju-mei, whether she wants to or not, if she wants to keep her home:

"I'm frightened of you, Mae! The whole village is terrified of you! So, okay, Madame Owl, who is violent and aggressive, hates him. People know when you hate them, Mae. They also know when you love them."

Mae's nickname of Madame Owl is another indicator of her outsider status. The interface used in the village for connection to the internet has an owl as its symbol for educational resources. The village children are stunned into frightened silence by it ("...in Karzistan owls were birds of death, not of wisdom. The owl wore glasses, which was especially terrifying"); Mae duly becomes associated with it. Like the poorly-publicised Air test, the communication of information here stumbles over the hurdles presented by local knowledge and local meanings. The interface is geared towards a conceptual framework that excludes many of its would-be users, by failing to take other frameworks, other understandings, into consideration (something the illiterate Mae discovers early on).

The connection between Mae and Mrs Tung proves a neat device to underscore the theme of change and upheaval as a constant in Kizuldah's history, rather than an innovation of the First World's technological interference, with Air. "'I am fighting for the future,'" Mae says at one point, "'she fights for restoration of the past.'" Yet it is not so simple as she thinks. Through Mrs Tung's memories, Mae gets the long view of how nothing endures. Crucially, however, she also learns to mourn the passing - and to recognise the continuing value and beauty - of older ways of life.

We all want an anchor, we all want to turn the corner to go home. But home always goes away. Home leaves us. And then we get older and older again, and further away from home. From ourselves. We die before we die, my dear. We go from village beauties to old crones; from mysterious children to weary adults; from ripe maidens full of love to embittered, used women full of bile. And all we have is love. With nothing to love. Just the love, aching out, reaching out and never clasping love in return.

Just the reeds, just the swallows, just the mist in the air, the sunlight in the air, just the sound of the wind. That never changes. That is all the home we have.

Dear Old Mrs Tung.

Sleep, my dear.

For all the beauty we have lost, and all the beauty we will lose.

This is a touchstone of the novel: an acknowledgement of all that is bittersweet and inevitable about the passage of time, the gains and losses of change. Ryman continually resists easy answers. Kizuldah and its ways are portrayed with affection rather than sentimentality, with vibrancy rather than quaintness; this is no simple tale of traditional life resisting evil technology, or of backward villagers being saved by the Future. None of his characters are one-note as either villains or heroes, beneficiaries or victims; each person's response and experience is complex, and mutable. Although Mae is active and enthusiastic in her engagement with what is to come, her quest comes with considerable personal cost. The changes she fosters do not and will not bring happiness and ease for all, or anything like; whether Kizuldah will indeed manage to shape Air to itself, and retain a version of its own identity, remains an open question. Nor will Kizuldah's need to run just to keep up with the rest of the world end with Air; change will not stop coming, and the world is full of more complex connections and constraints than any one person can see or allow for.

Mae felt vertigo. She understood none of it, not the words, not the disputes, not what people wore, or even how they moved. Her future had seemed settled and in order. It had felt like a staircase up to a door that was clearly labelled: Air. You only had to make that climb once.

Instead the future was a pit. It went down in layers, each stranger than the next. And there was no bottom to it.

Yet what she finds in Air - and here Ryman turns increasingly to fantasy to envision the metaphysics of his technological future - is that the past, perhaps, doesn't go anywhere. Just as Mae and Mrs Tung can coexist in one mind, Air is everything at once - offering the possibility of a more egalitarian or at the very least a much stranger future:

Everything has always been and has always happened at once. Which means that nothing causes anything else. Which means that stories only happen in this poor balloon-world of ours. Stories have no meaning. Nothing can be interpreted. Everything just is, without meaning, without needing your philosophy and your science or all our miseries and myths and tales and explanations. It is all just one big smiling Now. Whoooooooooooooooo. That is the sound of Air, blowing.

~~Nic

Comments

[Trent]

Nic,

The novel sounds marvelous. It also sounds like commentary on present life with mass communication and especially the internet. Curious to posit a new development ("Air") to comment on conditions currently existing. I'm not certain if you addressed that directly; do you think that is Ryman's purpose?

I wish I had already read the work so I could further engage your thoughtful review. Is anyone planning to review The Harmony Silk Factory? I just started reading it.

[Dale Mellor]

Nic, your review of the book is for the most part accurate and insightful, but I feel there is a very substantial and important facet that you have completely missed.

Where you write of `Mae herself - proud, determined, endlessly curious, and entrepreneurial,' I got the distinct impression that this is not actually how she is at the beginning of the book, but just another, simple citizen of Kizuldah. It is only after the Air test that she starts to assert independence, becomes knowledgeable to create web pages (`screens'), and gains astuteness in business development and especially marketing. Later on she acquires a scientific interest in meteorology and in the ways of American business. I thus get the impression that the regional controllers of Air, probably the communist government, are using the device to accelerate the integration of their backwards societies into the modern world, in the interests of national competitiveness. This is further indicated, I think, by Tunch's appearance: he seems to be monitoring, nay overseeing, Mae's progress, helping where necessary to see that she has the resources to hand to realize her new-found ideas, and generally taking care (or trying to) of her personal well-being and also of the well-being of the village community which is being adversely affected by the new technology. He also checks her activities when she goes too far, and starts to tread on the government's own toes and promotes ideologies marginally adverse to its own.

I also think that part of this is Air's self-promotion. By subliminally, and gradually, opening people's eyes to the possibilities, the medium is selling itself to a sceptical population (why would a hand-to-mouth farming community want such a thing?). Of course, they resist it as much as possible (except that they are somewhat drawn by the entertainment value), and it is the intellectual gap that opens up between Mae and the rest of the village that causes the tensions, exacerbated by the fact that she starts to behave very strangely.

In short, I think you have missed out on just how much of Mae's actions, and hence this story, are actually driven by Air itself.

I'm in the process of writing my own review of this book; I'll post a link here when it is online.

Dale

[Nic]

Trent: To some extent, I think that is his purpose, yes. It's a fairly common way of doing things in the genre - examine our own issues by placing them in an altered/heightened context. (Not that this is the entire reason for choosing a future setting, of course, but certainly it's a significant factor).

Dale: Thanks for your response. While I agree that Mae's actions are often shaped by Air and its controllers - and by Mrs Tung - to a much greater degree than she realises (e.g. the affair with her neighbour), I don't believe this changes the essentials of who she is. She already *is* all of those things you quote from my post (proud, determined, etc) before the encounter with Air happens. Her resources are much more limited, and thus the scope of what she can achieve is too, but is she not already strong-willed, already running her own enterprise (she's set herself up as the 'fashion expert' with ties to the capital, remember, no-one has done that for her), already burning with curiosity about the outside world, etc...? Of course she is!

It's these characteristics and enthusiasms of hers that *make* her such a perfect exponent/test subject for Air - and such a compelling central character.

[Ted]

>a problematic - and odd, for
>reasons I won't go into -
>illicit pregnancy

At Readercon, there was a panel about brilliant but flawed novels, and Air was mentioned as an example, the pregnancy being the flaw. Could you be persuaded to discuss that aspect of the novel?

[Dale Mellor]

Mmm, true she was the `fashion expert', but I just read that as the village dress-maker (presumably all villages have one?) She wasn't chosen to be a test subject for Air; that happened by accident. As I interpret the book, she was a simple soul to begin with. I think maybe part of the problem is that Geoff Ryman had to give her an excuse to go to the capital to get the story going.

I too would be interested to hear what you make of the pregnancy...

[Nic]

Ted: I wouldn't go so far as to say that the pregnancy is a flaw, but it's certainly deeply strange! Thematically it (or the product of it) clearly links up with the more fantastical bent of the ending, the sense that *everything* can be experienced by *everyone* in Air - even a child who appears to be so extremely 'have-not' (as in has-no-sight, etc) can live fully in that world. It's a symbol of the future. Character-wise it clearly gives Mae something else to fight for - and perhaps it also stands as a consequence, an innocent victim, of her more thoughtless actions? I don't know!

As to how it occurs (and survives) - I can only put that down to Ryman's interest in alternative sexuality (and alternative procreation, I think?), and feel slightly bemused by it. ;-)

Dale: It's been pointed out to me that the first chapter of _Air_ is online here:

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/air.htm

"village dress-maker (presumably all villages have one?)"

It's rather more than just dress-making - it's a business, in which she explicitly trades upon her contacts and superior information to provide her customers with a product (indeed, a whole service) that they could not get by themselves, to make money, and - in so doing - to give her greater standing and perceived authority in the village. She's even starting to subcontract the making of the dresses because her business is growing. Mae has identified an opportunity, and taught herself to exploit it - despite the pretty clear resistance of Kizuldah tradition to women running their own businesses. What is this if not determination, ambition, and entrepreneurialism?

As I said above, it's these qualities that equip her so well for Air, and make her prepared to give up everything to better understand it (and to help others do likewise). No, she isn't deliberately selected for the test subject role - she steps up and takes it!

(I would have thought that the more usual way of doing things would be for the women of each family to make their own dresses, perhaps using fabric brought to the village by travelling traders - not for one woman to monopolise and direct virtually the whole village's dress supply)

"a simple soul to begin with"

Here I think we fundamentally disagree. It seems to me the point of the novel that being a villager, being a 'have-not', doesn't make Mae simple or backward. She has fewer opportunities, poorer resources, and her cultural horizons are narrower, but that certainly doesn't mean she is content to sit still and take life as it comes until Air wakes her up. Her fire and her capacity to consider the wider, long-term implications of Air are obvious before the test takes place - in her speech at the end of the first chapter, for example, some of which I quoted at the top of this post.

[Dale Mellor]

Nic, I have the book sitting on a shelf near my shoulder, I don't need to read it online. I know what the opening chapter says (yes, I have just had a quick skim), but I don't think it makes Mae out to be as special as you do.

Anyway, I didn't come here to disagree with you, it is just that I was surprised that your review seemed to miss what is (for me) the single most important theme of the book, of technology directly interfering (messing) with peoples' psyches.

[Niall]

Dale, if you want to make the case that Mae is "a simple soul" before the advent of air, it would help if you could point to passages in the text that support that case. As it is, based on my own quick re-read of the chapter, and the specific quotes and details Nic has mentioned, I have to admit I don't see much support for your position.

I'm also wary of the word "special". Chung Mae is not special in the sense that, say, the farm boy destined to be king is special. Neither is she special in that she's an exact fit for Air. This is one reason I resist your reading of Mae, Dale -- I think one of the most compelling elements of the story is the way Mae herself changes in response to Air, to learn to use Air. It becomes significantly less compelling to me if that is a change that comes from other people imposing their will on her, as opposed to being about Mae discovering her own capabilities.

I think it's telling of the differences in our readings that you see Mae's trip to the capital as an excuse to get the story going. To me, Mae's job is an absolutely integral part of her character, because of the ways in which Mae later adapts the skills from that business to her new circumstances. Which, I guess, is just a different way of saying what Nic already said.

[Victoria]

I haven't read the novel, only the short story that became the novel, but my sense of Mae was very similar to Nic's: that she was an unusually sophisticated and independent minded woman from the very beginning. In fact, as I remember it, the story was predicated on her being exactly this way.

Very interesting discussion btw. I'm looking forward to reading the book soon. :-)

[Nic]

Dale: I do apologise, that link was meant to be for anyone reading the discussion (including me, since I don't have the book to hand), not specifically for you! I added your name in after I'd written most of the comment, and obviously didn't pay enough attention to *where* in the comment I put it... :-)

I think you're right that technology getting into/messing with people's heads is important in the novel. It's just that I think this is mostly expressed via Mae's (sometimes obviously debilitating, sometimes more subtly influential) connection with Old Mrs Tung - producing some changes in behaviour, yes, but mainly an additional (rather than a replacement) perspective upon events. Mae is constantly in dialogue with, or at the very least aware of the separateness of, the voice inside her head, isn't she?

This connection represents something potentially sinister about Air, it's absolutely true. But it seems to take the government (seen through Tunch) somewhat aback - and it's something Mae learns to manipulate and use to her advantage in the course of the novel. I assume you would argue that she is able to do this because Air has changed her - my reading is that she can do this because the interaction with Air gives her a *reason* to (actively learn to) do it.

[Dale Mellor]

Niall: Dale, if you want to make the case that Mae is "a simple soul" before the advent of air, it would help if you could point to passages in the text that support that case.

Well, the first two paragraphs of substance read, ``Mae was the village's fashion expert. She advised on makeup, sold cosmetics, and provided good dresses. Every farmer's wife needed at least one good dress.

``Mae would sketch what was being worn in the capital. She would always add a special touch: a lime green scarf with sequins; or a lacy ruffle with colourful embroidery. A good dress was for display. "We are a happier people and we can wear these gay colours," Mae would advise.''

[NB. The capital ``was as Mae remembered it from childhood,'' implying that her connections there may already have been established for her through maternal inheritance, rather than her forging the connections and creating her business entirely herself.]

This isn't rocket science. For me it implies a simple woman living in a simple society. I can almost understand if you infer a woman of sophistication at the top of her society, but I find the book more continuitously satisfying if she is just one of the crowd to begin with, and find it easier to see her subsequent actions as a mixture of naivety and implanted intelligence (and, of course, confusion). That's how it all feels to me.

[Dale Mellor]

Nic: ...it's something Mae learns to manipulate and use to her advantage in the course of the novel. I assume you would argue that she is able to do this because Air has changed her - my reading is that she can do this because the interaction with Air gives her a *reason* to (actively learn to) do it.

I would definitely argue this way. I agree she has reasons to learn new things, but I think the things she learns are way above her at the outset (especially the meteorology stuff); if Air is aiding her learning in even a small way, then there is no reason why it shouldn't be directing her emotional state, and hence her actions, at the same time.

Another aspect which draws me to this conclusion is that early on it is made clear that, after the Air test is complete, Mae retains an ability to consciously go back into the system; but the astonishing fact that the Air is never actually turned off plays no further significant part in the book. I do believe that this is another indication that Air is interfering in the storyline even though it is not being alluded to.

[Niall]

"[NB. The capital ``was as Mae remembered it from childhood,'' implying that her connections there may already have been established for her through maternal inheritance, rather than her forging the connections and creating her business entirely herself.]"

I think this is a bit of a leap; I can't remember anything else in the book that supports such a reading, and on its own all the line says is that the town hasn't changed much in the years of Mae's life.

When you say "a simple woman living in a simple society", do you intend it as a judgement or just a description? While Mae's society is, literally, less complex than ours, calling it "simple" makes it sound ... somehow inferior. And calling Mae a "simple woman" verges on patronising.

And I think the book rejects both those positions. Mae isn't a poor benighted third-worlder, she is a full human being, possessed of as much intelligence and passion as anyone from the West. ("How *dare* they call us have-nots?") Kizuldah isn't a poor benighted third-world nation that needs to be rescued by technology; it is a country into which technology comes, which has to be dealt with.

If I was going to boil down the book's treatment of place and character into one word it would be, simply, "dignity". I can't see a sustainable reading of the novel that doesn't emphasise that concept, and I can't see a way of reconciling it with a reading that turns Mae into a puppet.

[Nic]

No, Dale, it isn't rocket science - which is why we can take such utterly divergent readings from exactly the same evidence. :-) The paragraphs you quote so dismissively, for example, say the complete opposite to me: they show Mae's drive, authority and innovation. She has turned what was previously (permitted to be) little more than a necessity for women - to, as Joe, later puts it, "clothe their nakedness" - and diversified and commodified it. She has popularised in Kizuldah the idea of fashion as aspiration, as an expression of identity; through her perceived influence and greater influence, she has encouraged the women to buy things they want, but don't need (the scarves etc). For the village women, she *is* Air before Air happens - she's their link to information about and from the outside world. (Or are you dismissing this because her power is merely in a female sphere?)

Your speculation that she is building on familial contacts is interesting, but untenable. I find it highly unlikely that her father had contacts in make-up and fabric-distribution, all of whom appear to be about Mae's age, or younger; in any case, Mae would have had to revive said contacts after a considerable number of years, given that her father died when she was young. (There is no textual evidence to suggest that Mae's mother did so much as stir out of doors without her husband - quite the opposite, in fact - so I doubt very much that such contacts were hers).

Mae does come from a society that is at least simpler (or complex in different ways). But set against this background she looks to me anything but simple. She has broken the mould of what it means to be an adult woman in Kizuldah before the novel even begins. Aside from Kwan and her arch-rival, both of whom derive some influence and autonomy from their husbands' wealth and status in the village, is there is any other married village woman we see whose life does not revolve entirely around her (husband's) fields and her kitchen? Have any of them carved out such a measure of autonomy from her home and husband as Mae? Does any other married village woman even ride into Yeshibozkent without her husband as escort?

[Nic]

Oh, I forgot:

"the astonishing fact that the Air is never actually turned off plays no further significant part in the book"

But isn't it the channel through which Mae and Old Mrs Tung remain connected? Also, rather more dramatically, the part where Mae tears down the fence at Tunch's facility with the power of her mind...

[Dale Mellor]

@ Niall: 8-0 I'm gobsmacked. ``Mae lived in the last village IN THE WORLD to go online.'' Here are people who live in single-roomed houses with their animals. In the village there is one sewing machine (which happens to be in Mae's possession), a car, a motorbike, a few houses with electric light bulbs, a cleric and a landowner who live in relative comfort in two-storey homes, a schoolteacher and a dress-maker; everybody else lives hand-to-mouth from farming the terraces. My guess is that the schooling system teaches basic reading, writing and counting. This is as pared-back a future third-world society as you can get -- what else could Geoff have done to simplify things and still have a story to tell?

Yes, they have passion, intuition, pride and dignity as anyone in the West (though I don't go as far as intelligence in the sense of knowledge), but that is human nature: everybody is proud of who they are.

I admit that I am swayed by the arguments that some of Mae's actions are due to an amplification of her original personality which therefore strongly influences the book, but I can't accept that the book free-wheels on Mae's intuitions after the Air test, rather than every nuance of the story being directly driven by Air in some way.

Nic: I didn't really get the tearing-down of the fence -- I find it is as deeply strange as the pregnancy. Both imply that Air has physical power, but the reader is left entirely to themself to ponder how this works.

As for Air being the channel through which Mae and Old Mrs Tung remain connected, well this is never actually stated; I had got the idea that Mrs Tung's persona had got implanted in Mae's head, and that she existed in there after the test completed. The irony is that I see this as part of the book _not_ under Air's direct influence, but an unfortunate accident that throws human inconsistency into the mix.

[Nic]

Dale: We're talking past each other, here, and I think it has much to do with us using the same terms to mean quite different things. For example, what you describe above is a simple economy, not (necessarily) a simple society. Kizuldah is a poor village, yes, and (most of) its people live their lives on a shoestring, with little space for leisure or luxury. But living hand-to-mouth is a fact of life for people in many societies (whether 'simple' or not), and the people of Kizuldah having fewer cars or lightbulbs - or, put another way, a way of life that prioritises other things - doesn't make them helpless victims by nature. (The flood, arguably, does, but then - as recent years have made abundantly clear - one hardly has to live in a 'simple' economy for a natural disaster to wreak havoc upon one's life...).

Secondly, knowledge and intelligence are not the same things. This is surely a central point of the novel. Knowledge is information; intelligence is how one acquires and uses information, or how one reacts to a situation even in the absence of full knowledge. Intelligence can be honed through the process of learning; but simply having access to information doesn't create intelligence, just as lack of information doesn't make one stupid. Mae is under-educated, but there is no doubt of her intelligence; she *can* learn, and does.

Kizuldah is poor, I suspect even by Karzistan's standards. It doesn't follow that it is passive, or its people dumb.

[A.R.Yngve]

AIR is indeed a marvelous novel, and bound to become a classic.

I particularly want to praise the novel's stylistic accessibility. It doesn't seem written for the "hardcore SF" audience yet it deals with "Hard SF". Other writers should take a lesson from this.

[Ted]

FYI, the author has described the novel as a Mundane fantasy.