When Gravity Fails [Paperback]

George Alec Effinger (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 13, 2005

In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audrian has kept his independence the hardway. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he’s available…for a price.

For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he can’t refuse.

The 200-year-old “godfather” of the Budayeen’s underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to confront a killer who carries the power of every psychopath since the beginning of time.

Wry, savage, and unignorable, When Gravity Fails was hailed as a classic by Effinger’s fellow SF writers on its original publication in 1987, and the sequence of “Marid Audrian” novels it begins were the culmination of his career.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Like a dive into the eye of a storm."
--The Washington Post Book World on When Gravity Fails

"Fast, cool, clever, beautifully written, absolutely authoritative. A kind of cyberpunk Raymond Chandler book with dashes of Roger Zelazny, Ian Fleming, and Scheherezade--but altogether original."
--Robert Silverberg on When Gravity Fails

"Ingenious, layered, sophisticated, and consistently bloodcurdling, When Gravity Fails kept me awake long after I had finished reading it.
--Spider Robinson

"Great entertainment...Places Effinger in the company of writers like Gibson."
--Fantasy Review on When Gravity Fails

"Superior science fiction . . . among the best I've come across."
--The Denver Post on When Gravity Fails

"A brilliantly written, knife-edged futuristic detective story . . . destined to be the year's most intense and emotionally involving SF work."
--Houston Post on When Gravity Fails

"Wry and black and savage... there's a knife behind every smile."
-- George R. R. Martin on When Gravity Fails

"Muscular, convincing, yet continuously surprising."
--Richard A. Lupoff on When Gravity Fails

"One of the best cyberpunk novels I've read . . . Effinger's prose is terse, direct, vivid and often laced with an enchanting sense of humor . . . this is only part of the book's delightful texture . . . gives you a real sense of what it's like to be an old-fashioned gumshoe in the seedy backreaches of a futuristic arab nation."
--The Providence Sunday Journal on When Gravity Fails

"Wry, inventive, nearly hallucinatory . . . a well-written, baroque riff on the time-honored themes of Raymond Chandler."
--Publisher's Weekly on When Gravity Fails

"This is the fourth or fifth time I've been asked to give a public comment on an Effinger book; and each time I've done it; and each time I've said you people are cheating yourselves if you don't forego food and rent to pick up on Effinger's work. Now, *this* time, will you for pete's sake listen to me and buy When Gravity Fails? It's as crazy as a spider on ice skates, plain old terrific; and if you don't pay attention I'll have to get tough with you! We have your childen and your dog. Buy, read and marvel...or else."
-- Harlan Ellison on When Gravity Fails


"Like a dive into the eye of a storm." (The Washington Post Book World )

"Fast, cool, clever, beautifully written, absolutely authoritative... absolutely original." (Robert Silverberg )

"Ingenious, layered, sophisticated, and consistently bloodcurdling, When Gravity Fails kept me awake long after I had finished reading it." (Spider Robinson )

"Great entertainment...Places Effinger in the company of writers like Gibson." (Fantasy Review )

"Superior science fiction . . . among the best I've come across." (The Denver Post )

"A brilliantly written, knife-edged futuristic detective story . . . destined to be the year's most intense and emotionally involving SF work." (Houston Post )

"Wry and black and savage... there's a knife behind every smile." (George R. R. Martin )

"Muscular, convincing, yet continuously surprising." (Richard A. Lupoff )

"One of the best cyberpunk novels I've read . . . terse, direct, vivid and often laced with an enchanting sense of humor" (The Providence Sunday Journal )

"Wry, inventive, nearly hallucinatory . . . a well-written, baroque riff on the time-honored themes of Raymond Chandler." (Publisher's Weekly )

"It's as crazy as a spider on ice skates, plain old terrific... Buy, read and marvel...or else." (Harlan Ellison )

About the Author

A winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, George Alec Effinger was the author of What Entropy Means to Me and Schrodinger's Kitten. He died in 2002.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Orb Books; Reprint edition (October 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765313588
• ISBN-13: 978-0765313584
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #205,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars OOP but still a classic SF thriller worth chasing down February 10, 2003

By J. Fuchs TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

George Alec Effinger wrote three books about Marid Audran, a private investigator living in the Budayeen, the red light district of an unnamed Arab country in the 23rd century (but in actuality modeled on the French quarter in New Orleans, where Effinger lived). When Gravity Fails is the first of the three books, which introduce us to Marid, who was raised in Algeria by his mother, an Algerian prostitute, and who never knew his French father. Considered a barbarian north african by the Arabs in his city, Marid lives on the fringes among the drug dealers and users, and the strippers, protitutes, sex changes and outcasts that live just outside the law, working as a private detective when he can find a client. Marid prides himself on being unwired, that is, unlike most residents of the Budayeen, Marid has not adapted his brain to accept personality modules, or Moddies, or add-ons, better known as Daddies. Nor does Marid work or live under the largesse or protection of Friedlander Bey, better known as Papa, who controls most the business, legitimate or otherwise, in the Budayeen.

When a client is killed in front of Marid's eyes and Marid's acquaintances start dying horrible deaths, Marid is drawn into an uneasy alliance with both the police, whom he does not trust, and Papa, to whom he does not want to be beholden.

Effinger has created a world that is unlike most science fiction books, keeping the actual science light, and letting us believe that this is how the Arab world might be in the 23rd century, with not much changed except a bit of technology. Effinger offers both an interesting who and why-dunnit, while examining the issues of faith and identity. Is Marid, a heavy drug and alcohol user who lives by his own code and is committed neither to Allah nor any other human, the faithful one, or is it Papa, who kills and extorts in the name of business but who faithfully prays 5 times a day? What is it like to be an outsider, and how do you find yourself?

This book is sadly out of print, but easily available used on the internet. Still compelling after all this time and well worth tracking down.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Or how Islam went cyberpunk March 7, 1999

By J. Angus Macdonald

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Effinger has created what might at first seem an impossibility -- a cyberpunk, film noir murder mystery set in the Middle East. Where is the Budayeen? That's not important (although from references it seems to be near Egypt); what is important is the characters. The people, from Audran to Papa to Half-Hajj all fit in this world. You know what they look like, feel like, smell like, and if ever they act out of character you know something is wrong. This is a world of shadows and sand, one where there is trickery and deceit around every corner. The mullahs call you to prayer and people wire their brains to alter their personalities. Life is cheap, sex is cheaper, and everyone has to look out for himself. There is nothing heavy-handed in the way Effinger puts this together. He is stylish without being self-conscious. You will be drawn in and only want to read more about this world he has created. This is a fantastic book.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story, but hindered by an uneven narrative May 20, 2002

By R. DECASTRO

Format:Hardcover

The elements that make this novel a cyberpunk classic are all here: the sharp story concept, the sleaze-noire environs, the eccentric yet honorable anti-hero, and the morally hazardous technology. I read this book upon hearing about Effinger's recent death, so I came to this novel well past its original release, and my perspective is affected by the 14 intervening years of evolution in cyberpunk.

In an unnamed Middle Eastern city's criminal enclave, the Budayeen, Marid Audran artfully plies his trade as a freelance underworld "fixer." Need someone found; need to make a break with your pimp; need to negotiate with the local godfather? Audran's your man. His essential feature is his independence, even from the cerebral implants that are universally popular: plug-in modules that alter your personality to any fictional or real person, and add-ins for instantly acquiring expertise on any subject. Audran even eschews the expedient of firearms. He relies only on his functional drug habit, and his occasionally useful crew of acquaintances comprising the barkeeps, bent policemen, prostitutes, and ne'er-do-wells of the Budayeen. Effinger renders the future of 400 years from now quite softly (nearly as an afterthought, except for the implants), but the intricate beauty of the Arab backdrop is vivid, with its ancient mores and formalisms coexisting with criminal enterprise.

Discordant as Audran's techno-phobia is for a sci-fi novel, Effinger plays this intriguingly as the basis for the dominant theme of the book: the contest between humanity and inhumanity, bridged as it is by consciousness, which can be altered by a technology that remakes who you are and what you know as easily as swapping a plug. I also think it was a deft distinction that Effinger made between modules and add-ins, because he clearly wants to keep the issues separate, with personality encompassing morality. Audran, who would be nearly amoral but for his own code of honor, becomes the agent for justice in the Budayeen and eventually embraces the means he fears in order to resolve the dark mystery of exceptionally brutal serial murders that threaten to unbalance the criminal order of the Budayeen.

An inspired story, one that is worth the read, but it does suffer from unnecessarily raw transitions in the narrative and an uncompelling international contest that motivates the murders. These shortcomings sap energy from the story and leaves the reader feeling a bit flat at the conclusion. And because of this, Effinger's work falls short of William Gibson's of the same period, but then again it's better than any of Gibson's later work (e.g., "All Tomorrow's Parties").