Geoff Ryman's AIR and our Parallel Universe Within

"In the future, everyone will be able to talk with their dead."  AIR

I just finished reading Geoff Ryman's Air, and I could not resist this post, not so much as a review, but as some afterthought on ideas expressed that, well.. are great. Thought- provoking, gentle, clever, different. This book is great.
It takes place in a remote village in China (?), in a not so remote future, exploring the complex rural dynamics after the coming of Air. So what is Air?
In that future, scientists have discovered that the extra dimensions co-existing with our own 3, can be accessed by the human brain after some minor over-the-air modification. That in turn creates the Ultimate Internet, a technological gestalt of sorts, where people use their minds to navigate through the accumulated knowledge of humanity (albeit not always free), communicate instantly and leap through in evolution.
Don't get the wrong idea here: this is not hardcore sci-fi stuff. We learn all that by following the simple life of a peasant trying to make something of herself. We see the change through her eyes and experience her loss and heartbreak when all goes wrong, her joy when good things happen. If anything, this novel is human above all, showing us that what makes us human can only become more prominent with technology. Sounds like a contradiction, but you have to read it to see for yourselves.
Air is like the Dreaming of the Aborigines mentioned before, like the place in our heads where childhood memories and dreams reside. Air is the Past, the Present and the Future all rolled into one.
Geoff Ryman reminded me that what can be dreamt, can never be forgotten. That forgetting is dying. That all that is good in us is not lost but coexists with everything else, even the bad.
That we learn through all eternity in our dreams. 
Thank you Mr Ryman for reminding us. We need that from time to time.

Dreaming of Things Lost

The Aboriginals of Australia have an oral history of a timeless time, called the Dreaming. In it and through it, they describe the times when gods walked, lived, bred and interacted with the Earth, a time of creation and wonder. Shape-shifting, timeless gods, not dead now but forever present, sleeping as forces in the lands they once inhabited.
Translated from a term that cannot be translated, the Dreaming just got a weird new twist. Following a Dreaming story, Duane Hamacher, a PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Sydney, discovered that the ancient tale regarding a cosmic impact is indeed true, as he searched Google Earth and found evidence of a crater. The expedition that followed verified that it indeed was a crater.

And it was not the only one. The team found many more, as they began examining the Dreaming tales related to cosmic events and objects falling to Earth.
All nice and good for science, but for a little glitch: Most of the craters where millions of years old, when no man was present to witness. What’s more, the craters are not easily discernible by eye, and it took satellite photos and mineral analysis to prove that they are indeed meteor impacts. 
We could start proposing theories and ideas on how these people came to know about things that far in the past.
But then, how do you describe a dream? How do you describe a parallel reality, occupied by gods, who co-exist in our own in select spots, but everywhere as well?
Like I said, how do you describe a Dream?
Most of it is weird, indescribable, alien. Only through feelings, as primitive as ritual dance, painting, songs, barbaric words and incantations. Only through dreaming terms can you approach it, but then again, most of it is lost.
An Aboriginal man told anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner  “White man got no Dreaming”, and, although it seems true in most cases, I reserve the right to differ. I think the Dreaming is in all of us, saturating the Earth. Few can feel it, and even fewer can handle it.
Like a force, a feeling,  a memory lost which you never had anyway, lingering in the edge of consciousness.
You may not remember, but you will never, ever forget.

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