The Sunburst Award for Best Canadian Science Fiction Book has been awarded to my fellow UK-residing expat Geoff Ryman for his novel Air. Geoff's written many fantastic novels, such as The Child Garden (about a world where curing cancer restricts cellular division and reduces the average lifespan to 30) and WAS, the World Fantasy Award winning mean and dreamlike retelling of the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the abused and downtrodden little girl in Kansas whom L Frank Baum used as his model for Dorothy.
'Mae lived in the last village in the world to
go online. After that, everyone else went on Air.' So begins Geoff
Ryman's AIR, a moving novel about change, tradition, information, power
and transformation. Ryman brings us to a remote Asian village one
heartbeat in the future, introduces characters who live on the page and
linger in the mind, and, in graceful, powerful prose, explores the
challenges of negotiating both technological change and everyday life in
the human community."
I was honoured to win the Sunburst last year for my short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More — many congrats to Geoff for his well-deserved victory!
