Alan's latest effort, The Old Air, is a masterful synthesis of personal and social themes, by turns fanciful, somber, and triumphant, its threads coming together with symphonic force and then drifting apart into artfully discordant narratives. This is fitting, given its subject matter, but I am getting ahead of myself.
The book is set in the not-too-distant future where, as a last ditch effort to stop climate change, the government has pumped huge quantities of a synthetic gas into the atmosphere. The gas (confusingly called "syngas," a term that currently refers to man-made hydrocarbons) is relatively cheap to produce and has an effect that is the opposite of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. By spewing large quantities of it into the atmosphere, humanity has been able to stabilize temperatures a few degrees above their present equilibrium.
Syngas is controversial, but most of the dire effects that were predicted by its opponents have not materialized. Overall, cancer rates do not appear to have gone up or down, and while certain types of cancer have become slightly more prevalent and others slightly less so, in all cases the changes are very small in magnitude. Much the same can be said of agriculture—yields are down slightly on average, but the change is almost negligibly small. In fact there is scientific dispute about whether these phenomena are real, or are even caused by syngas. Perhaps some effects of increased global temperatures simply took time to manifest themselves, or perhaps they are caused by something else entirely. Or perhaps it is all statistical noise.
One consequence, though, is indisputable and universally acknowledged. Syngas changes the way waves propagate through the air, deadening and distorting the sounds we hear. People can still understand each others' speech, and things like police sirens still work, though the volume must be increased. But most music is completely ruined. Church hymns sound ghastly; concerts are pointless. Music fans buy special headphones that form a seal with their skin, and then pump the headphones full of carbon dioxide from a cartridge. (The same system is used in movie theaters.) But syngas slowly leaks in, and within an hour or two the headphones have to be purged again. Music becomes an expensive taste, and live music of all kinds quickly disappears.
Of course adaptations soon emerge. Concert halls are retrofitted to be airtight, and the syngas-laden air is pumped out and replaced with a combination of pure nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide—the "old air." The audience is admitted through an airlock, and for a few hours music sounds the way it once did. But this is preposterously expensive, and so real, live music is available to only two categories of people: the very rich, and the musicians themselves.
The protagonist of the story is Marcus Weller, a pianist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Weller is a highly talented musician, and so his access to music is assured. But his girlfriend, a librarian, is neither wealthy nor musically talented, and although Weller can get her into the occasional performance for free, it is obvious that music doesn't mean very much to her.
Before long the orchestra begins experimenting with a combination dormitory/practice space that is sealed from the environment and filled with old air. This is fairly economical, because it is really the airlock—which allows people to go back and forth between the atmosphere and the old air—that is expensive to operate. And so Weller is sequestered with his fellow musicians for weeks at a time, straining his relationship with his girlfriend.
Inevitably, the orchestra soon begins renting out rooms in its sealed dormitory, which is augmented with gyms, stores, and restaurants. Wealthy patrons join the musicians for weeks-long stays, working remotely during the day, or perhaps enjoying movies without the need for headphones. Every night there is live music. Weller earns some extra money at night by playing in a dark, redolent, joyously raucous bar. For a few hours, at least, it is possible to forget everything and lose himself in the music, and he leaves every night with a full tip jar. But he wakes up every morning alone, missing his girlfriend, missing the outdoors, and feeling that there is something artificial and repellent about playing piano in a dive bar populated by the super-rich.
One day Weller is practicing by himself, and when he finishes a song, he turns to find that a guest has come into the room. Although it is against the rules, Weller lets her stay, and by the time he is done practicing she has started to weep, stirred by the music.
You can imagine where it goes from here. Weller is forced to confront deep questions that he has long repressed, most importantly, can he truly love someone who doesn't appreciate music? And how much control can he exercise over his feelings? Is love the kind of thing that can be made subject to reason?
But it is more than that. Weller foresees a dark future of growing separation between the haves and the have-nots, a world without any shared love of music. In short, a world in which music is a luxury that can be enjoyed only by people with talent or money, musicians and musical tourists. A world in which blessings are showered freely on the elites and denied to everyone else. How is a good person who loves music supposed to navigate a world like that?
And so The Old Air adroitly focuses the reader's attention on real-life questions about the foundations of love and the quandaries of privilege in an increasingly unequal world. Here I give Alan credit for his light touch. He doesn't pretend that there is any easy or satisfying answer to these questions. In fact, he suggests that we are caught on the horns of a society that is charging forward onto morally and aesthetically untenable ground. And our only choice, if we have a choice, is to be impaled on one horn or the other.
