First published 1986. Bantam paperback, 1988, pp 276, c.110,000 words
One might be forgiven for thinking that this book is about the sudden loss of gravity and how are people going to cope with floating around. That would be an interesting book, but this isn’t it. The title is taken from a Bob Dylan lyric quoted in the frontispiece and possibly refers to losing one’s sense of purpose. It is largely irrelevant. This is cyber-punk science fiction set in a Middle Eastern city, a bit like Baghdad. It is sometime in the future where both eastern and western large countries have fragmented into much small political entities.
The protagonist, Marîd Audran, is a laconic loner, a familiar of the seedy side of the city, very much in the mould of Chandler’s Marlow or an Ed McBain character. He is, like many of the people of the city, an outsider from elsewhere, yet he fits right in, popular with every bar-girl in town. Actually they may originally have been a bar-boy as gender seems to be easily and unremarkably swapped. Audran’s main squeeze used to be a male but is now voluptuously female. This is a world of decadent pleasures, where tourists come to get a thrill and hope to get home with a tale to tell for only the loss of their wallet. Audran’s drug use is incessant, or almost so, an occasional lapse is celebrated with another dose. The bad guys are straight out of any noir thriller, with pneumatic babes out to fleece the punters and tough thugs at the bottom, slippery sharks in the middle and smooth sophisticates at the top who pull all the strings.
As the world of noir is invoked, a detective story might be expected. A brutal killer (possibly more then one) stalks the streets, often gruesomely murdering what seem like random victims. However, there is precious little detection here: hero and villain seem to run into each other remarkably easily: who is stalking whom? There is a lot of bloodshed, broken bones and generally horrible stuff. The plot, such as it is, is thin at best and really irrelevant. The power of the book is in the original setting and the creative use of cyber-punk and noir tropes.
This is a world where people can have attachments to their brains that allow them to plug in small electronic ‘moddies’ and ‘daddies’. Usually the details of this is left out in cyber-punk, but here a quasi-explanation of how this works is given – interesting, if non-scientific. ‘Moddies’ allow the user to take on the personality of someone else, fictional, historical or freshly invented, along with all their personality traits, attributes and skills. ‘He had transformed himself from one man into another; he didn’t need the usual physical disguises: the entirely different set of postures, mannerisms, expressions, and speech patterns was more effective than any combination of wigs and makeup could be.’ [p244] ‘Daddies’ simply add a particular skill or attribute, such as complete fluency in a foreign language or suppressing appetite.
Effinger appears to have some knowledge of Arabic culture. The descriptions of costumes, speech patterns, and customs come across as real. Occasionally a little joke sneaks in: ‘The great English shâ’ir, Wilyam al-Shykh Sebîr, in his splendid play, King Henry the Fourth, Part II, says, “We owe to God a death … and, let it go which way it will, he that dies this year, is quit for the next.”’ [p165] for could just as easily be a quote from the Qur’an.
The writing is certainly fluid: this is an easy read on that score. Despite the progressive sex-change culture, actually all the women here are either prostitutes or other sorts of bar workers. The only power they wield is over access to booze and as femme-fatale.
If you have a high tolerance for bloody violence, massive drug-taking, and a liking for cyber-punk nonsense, then this is an entertaining read set in a highly unusual location for the genre, combined with all the tropes of classic noir. Don’t expect anything particularly sophisticated though; it is not The City and The City.
Wikipedia biography of Effinger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Alec_Effinger
Wikipedia summary of the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Gravity_Fails
Others’ reviews of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/132694.When_Gravity_Fails?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=KKnmf9Jj41&rank=1
© William John Graham, June 2023