George Alec Effinger (1947–2002)

When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger was published just three years after William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Like Gibson’s Case, Effinger’s Audran Marîd requires a wired brain to get the most out of virtual reality. Case uses a plug in his head to exercise his mad hacking skills in an abstract virtual space. Audran has his mental processing power and stamina amped up by implants. Audran can become a simulacrum of a fictional detective like Nero Wolfe. The villain, meanwhile, is dressing like James Bond and ordering his martinis shaken, not stirred. Unlike Case, Audran has the machine forced on him by the local godfather, who needs him to solve an underworld crime. The story takes place in a large middle eastern city that resembles Cairo and has a cast of characters that would be at home in a future remake of Casablanca. Effinger tells a good story.… (more)