When Gravity Fails
- ISBN-10
- 1497605407
- ISBN-13
- 9781497605404
- Category
- Fiction
- Pages
- 284
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014-04-01
- Publisher
- Open Road Media
- Author
- George Alec Effinger
Description
In a futuristic Middle East, plug-ins can turn anyone into a killer in this “wry and black and savage” Nebula and Hugo award finalist (George R. R. Martin). Set in a high-tech near future featuring an ascendant Muslim world and divided Western superpowers, this cult classic takes us into a world with mind- or mood-altering drugs for any purpose, brains enhanced by electronic hardware with plug-in memory additions and modules offering the wearer new personalities, and bodies shaped to perfection by surgery. Marid Audran, an unmodified and fairly honest street hustler, lives in a decadent Arab ghetto, the Budayeen, and holds on tight to his cherished independence. Then, against his best instincts, he becomes involved in a series of inexplicable murders. Some seem like routine assassinations, carried out with an old-fashioned handgun by a man wearing a plug-in James Bond persona; others, involving whores, feature prolonged torture and horrible mutilations. Soon the problem comes to the attention of Budayeen godfather Friedlander Bey—who makes Audran an offer he can’t refuse. Nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, the highest honors in the genre, When Gravity Fails, which introduced the cyberpunk Budayeen Cycle, is a pioneering work the Denver Post called “superior science fiction” and Harlan Ellison described as “crazy as a spider on ice skates . . . plain old terrific.”
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
A Fire in the Sun
By George Alec EffingerIn this follow-up to the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, the Budayeen is still a very dangerous place, a high-tech Arabian ghetto where power and murder go hand in hand.
-
Budayeen Nights: Stories
By George Alec EffingerThis book was originally published by Golden Gryphon Press and comes with a Forword and story notes by Effinger's widow, Barbara Hambly. The lead story in this collection, "Schrodinger's Kitten," won the Hugo, Nebula and Seiun Awards.
-
The Exile Kiss
By George Alec EffingerWill they find their revenge? With this culmination of the sequence of Marid books, readers will quickly understand why this series is considered one of the great works of modern SF and a defining example of the cyber-punk genre.
-
Gravity's Rainbow
By Thomas PynchonHe looks across at Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck, who is still miraculously upright though with a glaze about the eyes. Aha, right, s'posed to be counter-conspiring here, yes yes uh, now . . . he gets involved watching another pyramidal ...
-
When Gravity Fails
By David AckermanWhen Gravity Fails
-
The Budayeen Cycle: When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, and The Exile Kiss
By George Alec EffingerPraised as “a perfect example of how exciting the subgenre can and should be,” George Alec Effinger’s Budayeen Cycle is a towering and timeless science fiction achievement that continues to amaze, shock, and captivate readers (SF ...
-
Gravity Falls: Journal 3 Special Edition
By Alex Hirsch, Rob RenzettiThis $150 limited edition will also include a signed note from the creator of Gravity Falls and co-writer of Journal 3, Alex Hirsch himself.
-
The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet
By Richard Panek“Gravity—Our Enemy Number One.” In Gravity's Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves, by Harry Collins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Bacon, Francis. The Advancement of Learning, edited by Joseph Devey.
-
Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA
By Amy Shira TeitelA committee of military personnel, men from the Corps of Engineers, and civilian scientists had surveyed topographical and population maps of the Continental United States and found this remote area adjacent to the White Sands National ...
-
Nightmare Blue
By Gardner Dozois, George Alec EffingerNightmare Blue: the most addictive drug in the universe.