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George Alec Effinger

When Gravity Fails: The Classic of Cyberpunk SF (The Audran Sequence, 1) Paperback – November 1, 2005

by George Alec Effinger (Author)

223 ratings

Book 1 of 3: The Budayeen Cycle

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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.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publication date

November 1, 2005
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.64 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0765313588
ISBN-13

978-0765313584
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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

About the Author

A winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, George Alec Effinger is the author of What Entropy Means to Me, Schrodinger's Kitten, and the Marîd Audran sequence that begins with When Gravity Fails. He died in 2002.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orb Books; First edition (November 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0765313588
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0765313584
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.64 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #682,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,189 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Books)
- #65,077 in Fantasy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
223 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		53%
4 star		31%
3 star		7%
2 star		6%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Zeljka

Unique and interesting

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

Without doubt unique noir fiction, set in the Arab part of the world in the far far future, technologically advanced so much people can enhance, even totally transform their mind abilities and settings same as much as their bodies. Although I'm not sure about the accuracies and the real understanding the author got for the whole Muslim point of view, the world setting was anyway to me enough unfamiliar to be amazed by the author's imagination. Maybe because of so much strangeness, I really do not desire to read the sequels, not at the moment.
Anyway, When Gravity Fails would be really worth your time, if you want to read something entirely different - for me, it was so strange experience, I didn't even try to guess the killer (it was a crime story after all), as I was so absorbed with descriptions, wondering what might happen next in this kind of our future. Speaking of which, the shocking resolution of the story definitely proved that everything is possible...

4 people found this helpful

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Phil Wernig

Wired World

Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2014

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George Alec Effinger's science-fiction whodunit "When Gravity Fails" (1987), transports us to the year 2172, dropping us into the Budayeen, a walled in, rough-and-tumble tourist trap near the forbidding Sahara Desert, featuring bars, clubs, street thieves, prostitutes, and predators, all rather casually policed, with a well-populated cemetery.
In this future world, medical procedures and pharmacology exist for physical re-engineering and sexual transformation. Men can readily become women and vice versa. Direct modifications of the human brain are now commonplace through surgical implants that permit those suitably "wired" to become anyone or anything commercially available in "moddies". By "chipping in" a small circuit board, one can become any character from literature or history from James Bond to Genghis Khan, with true identity submerged. "Daddies" are also on hand - temporary data transfer chips that lend instant knowledge of any language, skill, or corpus of facts, however esoteric, for as long as the chip is in place.
To navigate this world with integrity intact, one must be "the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world." Our narrator, Marid Audran, is such a man. He is an easy-going hustler from the Mahgreb, an impoverished region of Algeria. He has found a home in the Budayeen, pulling himself up by his bootstraps from nothing to next-to-nothing. He has an uneasy relationship with the police, welcome acceptance by nightclub proprietors, a trio of friends, and the love of Yasmin, born a boy, now a voluptuous club dancer with the knockout looks that only surgery could provide.
A Muslim by birth, Marid is well versed in his creed, but knows how to take it or leave it. He refuses to have his brain wired, preferring to find pleasure and solace in pharmaceutical products. As he puts it:
"Drugs are your friends, treat them with respect. You wouldn't throw your friends in the garbage. You wouldn't flush your friends down the toilet. If that's the way you treat your friends or your drugs, you don't deserve to have either. Give them to me."
Even the Budayeen is subject to influences agitating the world beyond its walls. Marid accepts an assignment from a foreign diplomat to locate a missing person. His client is murdered before his eyes. Soon others in his social circle fall victim to grisly homicides. He is recruited by Friedlander Bey, the Budayeen's wealthy godfather, whose interests are threatened by the murders, to track down the killer. To prepare Marid for his dangerous mission, Friedlander Bey intimidates Marid into the brain wiring he has always avoided, adding an extra implant and a rack of special "daddies" that sharpen Marid's senses and suppress fear, anger, hunger, thirst, and lust. His investigation confronts mystery and mayhem with street smarts and hard-boiled banter.
In the book's prefatory page, Effinger (1947 - 2002) acknowledges his debt to Raymond Chandler and his source for the title in a quote from Bob Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues". In two sequels, "A Fire in the Sun" (1989) and "The Exile Kiss" (1991), he returns to the Budayeen with Marid, Friedlander Bey, and others of the original characters, including Bill, the transplanted American taxi driver, who has had one of his lungs removed and replaced with a sac that drips a continuous psychotropic fluid into his bloodstream - a deliciously sardonic invention, considering that the author suffered from childhood ailments that rendered him unable to pilot an automobile.
Effinger's employment of courteous Arabic verbal genuflections and Muslim pieties add spice, and flavor his trilogy with cultural insight.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Scott D. Harris

Takes you there. But its somewhere you've been a thousand times

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2019

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A cliche hard-boiled detective/anti-hero story set in a cyberpunk world. What makes this one more interesting is the nod to middle eastern culture. The character and setting really comes to life. The story moves forward and reads like a decent Netflix series.

All in all a meh story set in an unusual setting with some fun retro-cyberpunk details. Easy read for the money. Worth the price. Not sure it's interesting enough of a story to read the follow-up novels.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Dan S. Tong

Superb and exciting novel set in an exotic Middle Eastern culture.

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2017

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When Gravity Fails is an ingenious original classic SF novel with a unique Middle Eastern setting, that combines Cyberpunk with Mystery. Effinger presents an unusual protagonist who lives in a believable future where an effective interface has been created between the neural circuitry of the human brain and human engineered electronic technology, to enable chipping the brain.

I loved the exotic atmosphere that Effinger has created and found myself happily suspending disbelief in future techology and new types of addictions.

Not for action fans, this book is to be savored for it's slower but deliberate pace and smart worldbuilding. I recommend it highly.

2 people found this helpful

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Evelyn

Ultimately unsatisfying

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2019

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I've been on a hardboiled sf kick lately, so I picked this up after finishing the altered carbon books. I was intrigued by the setting, but this book ultimately felt anticlimactic in its reveals and revelations, with most of the plot feeling directionless, almost accidental. Few of the characters have enough likeable traits to keep you rooting that much for them, including the main character. If I return to read the other two Budayeen novels, it'll only be after I've exhausted most other options.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Bertolt

Okay

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

Don’t understand why this is regarded as a classic of cyberpunk, since the only ‘cyber’ elements are the ‘modies’ and they are a bit flat, undeveloped as an idea. For the rest, this is mostly a Chandler-style detective story – not particularly well written, frankly, with a not especially interesting story and too-thin characterisation. Where the book scores is in its world. This is partly because it is set in something like a middle-eastern souk, certainly, but more importantly because most of its denizens sport various kinds of physical modifications, from full sex changes to facial augmentations. That does give some fizz to the thing. You do get a sense of a different society operating.

Is that enough? I was happy for the book to be over, so probably not, for me at least. If I could give it two and a half stars, I probably would – but erring on the side of generosity, I’ll stump for three.

3 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Stunning and street smart Muslim sci fi thriller!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2018

Verified Purchase

This story was well written and had a great original plot. It was endearing to have a Muslim character or close to a Muslim character as the lead character. His actual deeds and devotion as a pious Muslim would by some afficionados be debatable. The story was reminiscent of Neuromancer by William Gibson and even that of Philip K Dick as well. The book was so interesting to read and came to a good climax. There were good dramatic moments. I can' t wait to read the next book in the series.

John Were

Tedious

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 15, 2018

Verified Purchase

Trying hard to be Lester del Rey but failing to achieve decent characterisation, plot, tension or charm. Shame. It started well.

Justin

Great storytelling and atmosphere, likeable protagonist.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2015

Verified Purchase

Charming story, a nice view (if it's real!) of middle east culture, and a very likeable protagonist. Not "hard sci fi" or anything like that, but great storytelling.

Amazon Customer

Cult classic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2015

Verified Purchase

Part of Effinger's cult classic Marid series; distinctive, elegantly written, atmospheric, first rate as both SF and crime fiction.

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