The basic facts are these: George Alec Effinger was born in 1947, sold his first SF story in 1971, and almost immediately received a Hugo Award nomination. His first novel was a Nebula Award finalist the following year, and he was runner-up for the inaugural Campbell award for Best New Writer of the Year. But it was 1988 before Effinger won his only Nebula and Hugo awards. He died in 2002 with only the one double award to his name, and his last collection of stories, Budayeen Nights, sits before me as I write this.

So much for the facts, which only hint at deeper mysteries. To place early stories on final award ballots clearly marks talent. But to have to wait 16 years for victory hints too, at early promise unfulfilled. Certainly Effinger seemed to fade from the front ranks of SF from the mid-'70s onwards. He never completely vanished -- he was far too prolific an author for that -- but he certainly stopped appearing on the ballots for some time.

The answer to this is contained in the explanatory notes from Barbara Hambly, as an introduction to, and prefacing each of the stories in Budayeen Nights.

His early work was archetypal '70s SF -- dark, iconic works that reflect the uncertainty of the times: the Vietnam War comes to Winnie The Pooh's 100 Acre Wood, piles of cars reach upwards in an unending skyscraper, while the old world certainties of decency, rectitude and the black-and-white good-and-bad dichotomy of traditional SF fade into a shimmering blur of reality more in keeping with the uncertainties of Watergate and Vietnam.

His best-known series of stories are set in the Budayeen, the locale of three Effinger novels: When Gravity Fails, A Fire In The Sun, both Hugo and Nebula finalists, and The Exile Kiss. The world of the Budayeen is that of losers trying to gain an advantage with clip-on identities, but still using the same old scams grifters have always used, like the fake lost ring con. Effinger's characters are Arabic Muslims, but intriguingly, given the quasi-hysterical times in which we live, recognizable as people, whatever their faith.

"Schrödinger's Kitten," his Hugo and Nebula award-winning story, opens the collection. It's an intriguing examination of alternate worlds, the story of Jehan, who in alternate reality after reality is either raped, or executed for killing in self-defense -- still the only options open to women in many third world countries today. Only in a few does she survive, and in those appear the great theoretical physicists of the middle quarter of the 20th century -- Einstein, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, of the title. At the end of the story, there is a triumph, of sorts, in mere survival.

"M'rid Changes His Mind" is a novella that was short-listed for awards in its own right, but is also the first two chapters of A Fire In The Sun. The story of M'rid, a small-time con-man who is adopted by the local Godfather (who may also be his father). It's colourful, funny, and sad in equal measure.

"Slow, Slow Burn" features Honey Pilar, a sex star briefly mentioned in the previous story (reading this collection is sometimes like walking through a crowded hall of mirrors -- one sees the same people again and again, but from different angles). It's a fascinating read, if only for what Effinger doesn't say about his characters: he offers no comment on their morality, or what Honey is thinking or saying. We are left solely with what she says by which to judge her. It's also an interesting view on future celebrity, and perhaps one of the most convincing stories of its kind.

With "M'rid and the Trail Of Blood" we return to M'rid, his club, his partner, and the Godfather, Papa Bey: this time a vampire stalks the Budayeen, and when one of M'rid's friends is taken, M'rid decides he must act, even though he's been warned off by Papa. The story's highlight is the fine set of supporting characters, including Bill, a permanently stoned taxi driver, who's convinced he's wrestling with the villain, rather than a palm tree!

"The King of The Cyber Rifles" is only tenuously linked to the Budayeen, but J'n Muhammed, the central character of the story, is a devout Muslim, who shares the world-view of the characters elsewhere. As this is one of the best stories in the book, I'm glad they included it. A lonely soldier guards the Khyber Pass against wave after wave of guerilla attacks, until his weapons software is compromised by a saboteur. This story should have received wider recognition at the time, and time has lent Effinger's precognition of our New World Order today an eerie accuracy.

"M'rid Throws a Party" is another story taken from the opening sequence of a novel -- in this case Effinger's fourth, an unfinished book in the sequence. Unlike "M'rid Changes His Mind," this story is clearly a novel extract, at the end, there's no clear resolution; it feels as if Effinger has drifted through the piece, which is purely down to the lack of the clear feeling of resolution a reader feels with most short stories. For all that, it's a fun read.

"The Way of The World" is set much later, after the unwritten fifth novel of the sequence. The narrator is hiding out from his enemies, (although unnamed, the story introduction clearly indicates who the narrator is -- so if you don't want to know, skip it), and working as a security consultant. The tone is world-weary, jaded, as befits a noir homage, and the plot, original when the story was published in 1992, now seems equally tired. Still worth reading, but for me, the weakest story so far.

"The City on the Sand" is the oldest piece in the book, published in F&SF in 1973. As it's 15 years older than any other story, there's a different feel to it: Effinger was a much younger, rawer writer. This has the feel of not just a story set in the future, but an alternate future -- there's a reference to the Americas never having been settled -- and much of the story's elusive mystery stems from this. The plot is skeletal: basically a day in the life of the narrator. However, it's interesting to see the ambiguity become more and more pronounced as the story progresses, as Weinraub is forced to confront his real self, and abandon his fantasies; this is a much more complex literary piece than the standard narratives of the later stories.

Finally, "The Plastic Pasha" is a fragment of a longer story, and as such, with it the book fizzles out; it's worthy of inclusion only for the sake of completeness. There's a definite weakness in the order of the stories, which undermines some of my admiration for the opening half of the book.

Considering this weakness, readers may want to attempt the last three stories first, or halfway through the collection, as this is a world well worth exploring. I was unfamiliar with Effinger's novels before reading Budayeen Nights, and I'm not sure whether I would have benefited from any previous familiarity with the Budayeen, but I'm a convert now. If anything, these stories are more relevant now than when they were written.

Kudos to Golden Gryphon for producing such a handsome volume.

Colin Harvey has appeared in Aphelion, Peridot Books, Song of the Siren, and most recently in Gothic.net. He lives just outside Bristol in the UK with his wife and assorted dogs. His previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive. To contact him, send him email at feedback2ch@yahoo.co.uk.