Air

Air, also known as Air: Or, Have Not Have, is a 2005 novel by Geoff Ryman. It won the British Science Fiction Association Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was on the short list for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2004, the Nebula Award in 2005, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2006. Ryman initially wrote a short story for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction entitled "Have Not Have", which was in... more

Air, also known as Air: Or, Have Not Have, is a 2005 novel by Geoff Ryman. It won the British Science Fiction Association Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and was on the short list for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2004, the Nebula Award in 2005, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2006. 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. This was expanded into a novel initially titled Air: Or, Have Not Have, and renamed to just Air in all editions since the first. 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... less