Sometime at the end of the 22nd century, in a city called Budayeen somewhere in the Middle East. Budayeen, a city where the West and the East meet, is inhabited by muslims, devout and secular alike, and people from other nations who have come there for whatever reasons. It's a place where tourists come to find exciting stories to tell their friends or to seek the company of many prostitutes, either biological women or transgender, or just to drink and party their woes or merriments away. It is a place where you can make your dreams come true, even if that means spending a night with a prostitute modded with a personality mod of someone else you've always wanted.
Most of the people of Budayeen walk around with some kind of modifications. They have wired their brains to accept moddies and daddies. Moddies are personality constructs that can turn you into anyone, either real or fictitious. Daddies are more like extensions or add-ons, allowing you to access knowledge on different skills, like being fluent in languages or just keeping you from being tired or stopping you from feeling pain.
Marid Audran is one of the many inhabitants of Budayeen. He is a freelance operator who does odd jobs for people who need assistance, maybe detective work or protection. And when he's not on a job, he is spending his time in one of the many bars of the city, drinking and popping all kinds of pills. Unlike many of his friends, including his transgender girl Yasmine, he isn't modded. He prides upon the fact that the only alteration to his brain comes from booze and pills.
Audran's problems start with a case. A Russian man, Bogatyrev, tasks him, with a big wad of cash, to find someone, a man who has gone missing. But Audran doesn't even manage to start the case when Bogatyrev is shot by an assassin wearing a James Bond-moddy. Soon after this, a series of gruesome killings begin to happen, all seemingly disconnected, but Audran believes he sees a connection the cops don't.
Then, when Friendlander Bey, a local crime boss, takes an interest and at first believes Audran has his hands on the deaths. After being satisfied this wasn't the case, Bey orders him to get to the bottom of the case, especially now that his close associates, aside from random prostitutes, have ended up dead. There's a catch, though; Bey demands Audran gets modded to have all the possible edge against the killers.
After a stint in a hospital, Audran finally manages to get to the bottom of the whole case. And what he finds out is far dirtier than he ever imagined, not only on a local scale, but revolving around the politics of foreign nations, with different political parties trying to beat each other.
The first time I heard of the city of Budayeen didn't happen through this book. It happened through an old adventure RPG game, Circuit's Edge, that was released in 1990 and developed by Westwood. It's been ages since I played that, so I don't remember how closely it followed the story of the book, but I do remember liking it.
But enough about that, the book itself is quite good. I don't remember reading that many sci-fi books set in the Middle East, but be it as it may, When Gravity Fails is a great little book. It's not an action-packed story, and Audran is most of the time out of his league with the case he is thrust into, but it flows well, and Effinger is a good writer who knows how to bring his seedy little world alive.
The world the story is set in is interesting in its own right. As it revolves around the Middle East, it's evident that the region is going strong. What we learn of the Western world doesn't paint a good picture. The USA and the Soviet Union have collapsed, breaking into many smaller countries. The same has happened in Europe. The former masters of the world have ceased to be and have been replaced by the arab world.
Another aspect is how the story handles sex, sexuality and gender. Audran himself is dating a trans woman, and this isn't seen at all as a big deal by anyone. In fact, it seems most of the sex workers in the city are transgender, so sex change itself isn't a huge deal in the eyes of this world. Audran is asked at one point if he dislikes biological women, but he denies that and says his relationship just turned out to be the way it is.
Despite having been written in 1986, When Gravity Fails still feels like a very refreshing story. It is the first book of 3 with Audran. A 4th was planned, but Effinger sadly died before he managed to finish it. Whatever he managed to write of it was released as a short story posthumously.
When Gravity Fails itself won both Nebula and Hugo best novel awards. Not that it automatically means something is great, but that also was something I didn't know when I read it the first time. That said, I'm not surprised either, as it is a great book.
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