Books - When Gravity Fails

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	Books - When Gravity Fails

When Gravity Fails is a cyberpunk novel by George Alec Effinger, published in 1987. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Nebula Award for Best Novel.

Like William Gibson, the linguistic style is generally coarse and occasionally opaque. But the metaphors are less florid, and the story telling, while sometimes lapsing into rambling diary monologue, remains less distant — and indeed approaches the reader as if in friendship, yet without being over familiar.

Like Gibson, Effinger combines mind altering drugs with mind altering machines. However, the drugs are more prominent, often tossed with wry souffrance — and social connections are rarely a savior in Effinger's world, but rather the cause of more painkillers, uppers, downers, and so on.

Where Gibson sees the future West moving inextricably towards Japan, Effinger twists the future towards the Middle East instead. In the process Effinger effortly drops the benefits of future high-tech developments firmly in the gutter — where it will inevitably land, given humanity's incessant ability corrupt any vision, no matter how lofty. Perhaps the most disturbing image, that of Microsoft making chips that plug in your brain to teach you anything instantaneously, may have been unstated inspiration for the Matrix movies.

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