WHEN GRAVITY FAILS: The Classic of Cyberpunk SF: 1 (Audran Sequence) - Softcover

"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

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.