Review

"A major science fiction epic."
--_Locus _on A Fire In the Sun
__
"A Fire In the Sun proves beyond any doubt that Effinger is a master."
--Mike Resnick

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

Product Description

Marid Audran has become everything he once despised. Not so long ago, he was a hustler in the Budayeen, an Arabian ghetto in a Balkanized future Earth. Back then, as often as not, he didn't have the money to buy himself a drink. But he had his independence.

Now Marid works for Friedlander Bey, "godfather" of the Budayeen, a man whose power stretches across a shattered, crumbling world. During the day, Marid is a policeman…and Bey's personal envoy to the police. His new position has brought him money and power which he would abandon in a moment if he could return to a life of neither owning nor being owned. Which, unfortunately, isn't one of his options.

It's also not an issue. For something dark is afoot. Something that is sending the city into chaos. Helping a child-mutilator to avoid arrest. Sending a killer to murder Marid's partner. Murdering prostitutes and savaging their remains. Signs point to the hand of Abu Adil--the one man in the city whose power rivals Friedlander Bey's. Whatever happens next, it's not going to be good news for Marid Audran…

Short Story Collection including stories from the Marîd series.

Schrodinger's Kitten

Marid Changes his Mind (basis for chapters 1 and 2 of Fire in the Sun)

Slow, Slow burn (Honey Pilar)

Marid and the Trail of Blood

King of the Cyber Rifles

Marid Throws a Party

The World as We Know It (an aged Marid)

City in the Sand (Budayeen without Marid)

The Plastic Pashas (Marid's younger brother)

From Publishers Weekly

This is the third in a series about Marid Audran, a street hustler turned crime honcho in an Arabian city in a well-thought-out future world. The previous books, When Gravity Fails and A Fire in the Sun , featured skillful writing and engaging tales. This latest effort is short on both. The story sees Audran and his boss, Friedlander Bey--one of the two most powerful men in the city--set up by Bey's rival, Shaykh Reda Abu Adilp. 171 , and exiled on false charges to the desert. But the exile and their journey across the desert with the Bani Salim tribe who rescue them p. 79 , while seemingly the main plot, wind up being merely the prelude. The bulk of the book concerns Audran's quasi-criminal dealings in the city (where the law is mostly what Bey says it is) both before and after the exile. Audran is a likable and interesting narrator, but the ending occurs much too quickly and there's far less advancement of character in this novel than in the prior two. Those who haven't read the preceding volumes will have no idea what's going on here, but anyone who has read them will be undoubtedly be disappointed by this sequel.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Marid Audran, reluctant right-hand man to Friedlander Bey, one of the Budayeen's most influential power brokers, finds himself and his boss framed for murder and exiled to the desert--from which Bey's enemies hope they will never return. Set in a future where even the Muslim world has succumbed to cyber technology, Effinger's ( When Gravity Fails , Morrow, 1987; A Fire in the Sun , Doubleday, 1988) latest Budayeen novel contains a tongue-in-cheek hero, a plethora of action, and a background filled with exotic detail. Purchase where the previous novels have a following.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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

Product Description

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.