  We construct explicit algebraic geometry codes built from the
Garcia-Stichtenoth function field tower beating the Gilbert-Varshamov bound for
alphabet sizes at least 192. Messages are identied with functions in certain
Riemann-Roch spaces associated with divisors supported on multiple places.
Encoding amounts to evaluating these functions at degree one places. By
exploiting algebraic structures particular to the Garcia-Stichtenoth tower, we
devise an intricate deterministic \omega/2 < 1.19 runtime exponent encoding and
1+\omega/2 < 2.19 expected runtime exponent randomized (unique and list)
decoding algorithms. Here \omega < 2.373 is the matrix multiplication exponent.
If \omega = 2, as widely believed, the encoding and decoding runtimes are
respectively nearly linear and nearly quadratic. Prior to this work, encoding
(resp. decoding) time of code families beating the Gilbert-Varshamov bound were
quadratic (resp. cubic) or worse.
