To answer that question, I think we should answer another question first and the question is – does it hinder the delineation of the author’s messages if we take Air as totally unrealistic? From what I heard in class, most of us agree that it doesn’t; we can still grasp the social commentary in the novel even if we take it as a fantasy novel. Therefore someone (sorry I can’t remember your name, I’ve tried recalling it for the last thirty minutes to no avail) proposes that the author should make Air just that – a fantasy novel. The author should not try to justify the science at all. But I think that the author should try to justify the science. Because I believe the author’s ultimate purpose is to comment on our society, not the society in the novel (which is fictional). The various parallels and links between the society in the novel and our society show that while Ryman is writing about some fictional society, he really wants to say things regarding the society we are living in today. The reason he tries to give us some science in the novel is thus to make his case of urgency and connection. Guaranteed his science does not stand on solid ground and is not realistic, but that is not the point. The point is that merely suggesting Air to be based on actual science helps to serve Ryman’s purpose. So instead of dissecting how “un-science” Air is, we as readers should accept and get by with the idea that Air is science-based and thus feel the urgency of all the real points the novel is trying to make.
Some may then say that Ryman should make Air more scientific: if he really wants to make the connection between the Air world and our world, why not make it totally, completely, one-hundred percent believable? But there is a reason for Ryman to render the Air world unfamiliar, foreign, distant, and yes, somewhat fantasy-like. I think I mentioned, in an earlier class discussion, my reason for this claim: to distance the readers from the Air world helps the readers see the world more clearly and objectively. And as it is our society that Ryman is trying to comment on, he wants to distance our society from us. Thus he creates a fictional world that appears to be foreign and unfamiliar to readers upon first glances, but of course if readers dig deeper they can see the connections and parallels. As we conceive Air to be something that is not our real life, we can judge it more objectively and comprehensively than we would if we were asked to judge our society, because then we inevitably have to start with a personal perspective, and this perspective is more often than not shaded by some sort of bias, albeit very unintentionally. This is not to say that we cannot judge our society objectively; it is possible to do so. It's just much harder. To help the readers easily gain an objective – or at least, a new – point of view, Ryman creates unfamiliarity and distance between the Air world and our world.
So I think that while we can go on debating about how realistic Air is, to grasp the main ideas of the novel we really need to accept what Ryman tells us in terms of how realistic Air is: it’s not something that will happen in our life (at least in some time), and it’s possible that Ryman himself does not think it could (ever) happen, but it is somehow science-based (and just exactly what that “somehow” is does NOT matter) so it could happen. That’s the premise Ryman gives, and it’s the best premise for this book because it serves to help convey his ideas. Therefore the best thing for us to do as readers is perhaps to just go along with it, and go examine the real contents and main points of the novel.
Very well said, Anne. As I mentioned briefly in class, mundane science fiction and Ryman's novel could be said to invoke the uncanny, a sense of familiarity coupled with an equal sense of unfamiliarity that strikes you, unsettles you, etc. What you're suggesting as Ryman's tactic is also akin to a Brechtian or Russian formalist tactic of defamiliarization (ostranenie).
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