When Gravity Fails

About “When Gravity Fails”

This 1987 novel by George Alec Effinger is set in the decadent Budayeen, where Marid Audran has kept his independence and identity the hard way, though he remains available for a price. A new killer roams the streets with bootlegged personality cartridges ranging from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler, and the two-hundred-year-old crime godfather of the Budayeen enlists Marid as his instrument of vengeance, requiring sophisticated surgical implants first.