In a futuristic Middle East, plug-ins can turn anyone into a killer in this "wry and black and savage" Nebula and Hugo award finalist (George R. R. Martin).Set in a high-tech near future featuring an ascendant Muslim world and divided Western superpowers, this cult classic takes us into a world with mind- or mood-altering drugs for any purpose, brains enhanced by electronic hardware with plug-in memory additions and modules offering the wearer new personalities, an...

Far into the future, Hartstein's graduation present from his grandparents was a wonderful trip…into the past. He had a long future in the doughnut industry to look forward to but this trip was the icing on the cake. It had been a long time since that first experiment in time travel was successfully pulled off, although not without its flaws. Now, in the future, time travel was a lucrative tourist industry. But the time travel industry was keeping one little fact to itself: two percent neve...

A hilarious story of overly helpful aliens and a WWII alternate history tale from the Hugo Award–winning author of When Gravity Falls.These two short stories serve as a wonderful glimpse into the mind of multiple Hugo and Nebula Award nominee George Alec Effinger, a singular talent in the world of SF.In The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything, benevolent aliens have arrived on Earth, sharing their knowledge but also their annoying, overbeari...

The complete Hugo and Nebula Award–nominated cyberpunk trilogy by an author whose work is "wry and black and savage" (George R. R. Martin).Praised as "a perfect example of how exciting the subgenre can and should be," George Alec Effinger's Budayeen Cycle is a towering and timeless science fiction achievement that continues to amaze, shock, and captivate readers ( SF Signal).When Gravity Fails: Set in a high-tech near future featuring an as...

The Hugo Award–winning author returns to the futuristic, high-tech Middle East setting of When Gravity Falls in this "major science fiction epic" ( Locus).In a world filled with so many puppets, strings tend to get tangled. In this follow-up to the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails, the Budayeen is still a very dangerous place, a high-tech Arabian ghetto where power and murder go hand in hand.Marid Audran used to be ...

From a Nebula Award winner: A "phenomenal," action-packed tale of crime, corruption, and cybernetics ( Locus).Set in a divided near future, The Exile Kiss is author George Alec Effinger's third book about the high-tech Arab ghetto called the Budayeen. It is a world filled with mind- or mood-altering drugs for any purpose; brains enhanced by electronic hardware, with plug-in memory additions and new personalities; and bodies shaped to perfection by ...

A coming-of-old-age novel from the Hugo Award–winning author of When Gravity Falls. "Engaging . . . spry, inventive, and often quite funny" ( Kirkus Reviews).In HEROICS, Irene--like everyone in the future--struggles with boredom. Food, clothing, and all the necessities of human life have been taken care of. But, what does that leave of life itself? At eighty-two, Irene sets out on a pilgrimage across America hoping to find the answer. Along the way...

A "brilliant collection" of short stories set in a "marvelously realized, imaginary Muslim city" from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).Long identified as a science fiction writer, except in his own eyes, George Alec Effinger had some of his biggest critical and commercial success with a series even he recognized and characterized as SF. Set in the marvelously realized, imaginary Muslim city of Budayeen, the three...

The world's first time traveler embarks on a multiverse misadventure in this madcap novel from "one of SF's distinctively nutty voices!" ( Chicago Tribune).Time travel: been there, done that … or at least Frank Mihalik has. On February 17, 1996, Frank discovers the secret to time-travel, or at least he thought he had. He must embark on a voyage through time and space in order to set things right. He must survive parallel universes in which--Oh my!--Shirley ...

The Hugo Award–winning author's "most memorable short stories . . . a tribute from those who best knew his work—his friends, fellow writers, and editors" (SFRevu).George Alec Effinger was a true master of satirical Science Fiction. Before his death in 2002, he gained the highest esteem amongst his peers for his pitch-perfect stylistic mimicry and his great insight into the human condition. Despite a life filled with chronic illness and pain, Effinger was a prolific...

A novel of first alien contact—and the conspiracy it unveils—from the Hugo Award–winning author of When Gravity Falls."Because it's there"—that was why Earth men climbed Mt. Everest and why, in 2017, they set out for the distant star Wolf 359. In 1988 they had learned that intelligent inhabitants from a planet orbiting Wolf 359 had been signaling Earth. That fact was reason enough to dispatch a manned probe to explore and investigate. But perhaps there was ...

Three slightly different versions of the same man inhabit three radically different versions of our world in this novel by a Nebula Award winner.Ernest Weinraub, Ernst Weinraub, Ernst Weintraub—three slightly different versions of the same name, the same man. Each incarnation of Weintraub/Weinraub inhabits a different version of our world: Ernest Weinraub lives in a maddeningly overcrowded New York, a hellish near-future world where sanity and life are imperiled by ...