Science Fiction Short Story Review: “Capitalism in the 22nd Century, or Air” by Geoff Ryman

Tweet

Saturday (already!) and time once again for a review of a story from The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016. Today’s selection is a stream of conscious piece titled “Capitalism in the 22nd Century, or Air” by Geoff Ryman. This takes the reader a little while to figure out what’s going on. The narrator wants to talk to someone named Graça urgently, wants to tell the other person a story. Graça has to disengage herself from AI to hear the story. The story has a title and an author: “Why I Did It” by Cristiana Spinoza Vaz. Cristina and Graça sleep in the same room, but not in the same bed. Cristina mentions Papa—oh, they’re sisters! And they’re going on a trip. They’re going to meet someone named Emilda Diaw in Lagos. From there, they will board a ship and leave earth, a wonderful adventure the sisters can’t wait for. Remember the morning it snowed? Snowed in Belém do Para? I think we were thirteen. You ran round and round our great apartment, all the French doors open. You blew out frosty breath, your eyes sparkling. “It’s beautiful!” you said. "It's cold!" I said. You made me climb down all those twenty-four floors out into the Praça and you had me throwing handfuls of snow to watch it fall again. Snow was laced like popcorn on the branches of the giant mango trees. As if A Reina,the Queen, had possessed not a person but the whole square. Then I saw one of the suneaters, naked, dead, staring, and you pulled me away, your face such a mix of sadness, concern—and happiness still glowing in your cheeks. “They’re beautiful alive,” you said to me. “But they do nothing.” Your face was also hard. Your face was like that again on the morning we left—smiling, ceramic. It’s a hard world, this Brasil, this Earth. We know that in our bones. We know that from our father. Ryman’s writing is rich, evocative and beautiful. He’s able to draw the reader into the girls’ native Brazil as readily as he is to show them in Nigeria or in the AI-enhanced world of the next century. I just wasn’t sure there was story here until the last couple of paragraphs. Even so, confusion remains. According to Wikipedia, Ryman teaches Creative Writing at University of Manchester's English Department. He’s associated with a subgenre of science fiction referred as “mundane science fiction.” He’s currently working on book set before the American Civil War. I was unable to find an online version of this story. ______ Title: “Capitalism in the 22nd Century, or Air” Author: Geoff Ryman (b. 1951) Published in: The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 First Published: Stories for Chip 2015